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THE 



EVIDENCE OF FAITH 



BY 



/ 

JAMES S. BUSH 

AUTHOR OF "more WORDS ABOUT THE BIBLE," ETC. 




BOSTON 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

1885 

\ ^ .... 



JA 






Copyright^ 1884, 

By James S. Bush. 



All rights reserved. 



©ntbersitg Press; 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



TO 
OF 

EDWARD A. WASHBURNE 

This Volume 
is affectionately inscribed 

BY 

HIS FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 




HE author of this volume would 
not venture to add another to 
the myriads with which the 
press is filling the world ol: 
religious thought, but for a re- 
gion in that world, not unexplored indeed 
by minds more gifted than his, but still 
shunned for its imaginary dangers by many 
whose office it is to lead the way to its hidden 
treasures of spiritual truth. He believes that 
the unseen things of God which lie beyond 
the domain in wliich Nature witnesses to His 
power and goodness, do not require the added 
testimony of miracle. Spiritual things are 
spiritually discerned; they are revealed di- 
rectly to the heart of faith. Nor has the 
belief which we identify with the Christian 



ii PREFACE. 



grace of faith any other than the witness of 
this inner light. 

The author is persuaded that the kind of 
teaching which this volume conveys is de- 
manded by the present state of inquiry among 
serious-minded people^ and that the interests 
of Christianity in most of the churches are 
imperilled by the want of such teaching. 

In the Introduction he gives public utter- 
ance to a profound conviction which has held 
his own mind for years ; no longer restrained 
by any doubts of the wisdom of such utter- 
ance. The fears of others, convinced of the 
same truth yet dreading the effect of its 
avowal either upon the weaker minds of indi- 
viduals or upon the peace of churches, he 
dismisses as groundless. It is high time that 
the more enlightened of the clergy should 
speak the truth as it is known and believed 
by themselves. The suspicion, already awak- 
ened and rapidly spreading among the people, 
that the clergy are not dealing honestly with 
them, can be allayed only by a more candid 
admission of traditional errors, and a more 
careful examination of difficulties constantly 
arising in thoughtful minds and requiring 



PREFACE, iii 



the instruction of such minds at the hands of 
those who profess to be their teachers in 
rehgion. The teaching so required must not 
be gathered alone from books, which few have 
time to read, and many of which are avow- 
edly hostile to the Christian faith. It must 
be given by those who are appointed in the 
churches to be the teachers of their fellow- 
men, and who are supposed to have the un- 
derstanding and the knowledge which shall 
enable them fitly to meet so grave a responsi- 
bility. The author believes that the function 
of teaching should fill a larger place in the 
office of the Christian ministry than it has 
done in these later years, and that the clergy 
w^ho are endowed with the gift of teaching 
should not be restricted, but encouraged in its 
freest exercise among the people. 

In the sermons here given to the public, 
it was the preacher's aim to reach the average 
understanding of serious-minded people, and 
to convey to them the spiritual truth of Chris- 
tianity as free as possible from the errors con- 
tained in the current traditional theology. 
Addressing various classes of hearers, he en- 
deavored to clothe his thought in the simplest 



iv PREFACE. 



language, that he might so present the truth 
to all ; not unmindful that the end of all 
truth is to lift men up to a higher plane of 
spiritual life. He would fain commend the 
Christian faith to those who cannot accept 
much of the doo:matic teachins; with which 
it is thought to be identified ; and he con- 
fesses to his unwavering belief in the Church 
of the future, One, Holy, and Catholic, in 
which liberty shall be reconciled with unity, 
and in which the essential truth of our re- 
ligion, in its power upon the life, shall appear 
in its simplicity, beyond all doubting or pos- 
sibility of error. 

JAMES S. BUSH. 



Concord, Mass., 

September 25, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 



Pagb 

Introduction 9 

I. Coming of the Son of Man 35 

II. The Scriptures for, our Learning .... 51 

III. The Mirror of God 67 

IV. The Principal Thing 81 

Y. The Yision of Paith 97 

YI. The Star in the East Ill 

YII. The Life of the Spirit 133 

YIIL The Dignity of Man 147 

IX. The Truth in Love 167 

X. Knowing Christ after the Spirit . . . . 183 

XI. Citizenship in Heaven 199 

XII. Confessing Christ 213 

XIII. Christ the Archetype" 235 

XIY. The Law of Christ 241 

XY. Christian Fellowship 253 



VI CONTENTS. 

Page 

XVI. The Cheistian Doctrine of Puovidence . . 267 

XVII. The Christian Doctrine op Providence. . 283 

XVIII. Losing Liee to Pind it . . . . . . . . 299 

XIX. Is LiEE WORTH Living ? 313 

XX. The Way called Heresy 331 

XXI. The Lord's Side 345 



Introtiuctton^ 



" For altliougli it be necessary for us to believe whatsoever we 
know to be revealed of God, — and so eveiy man does that believes 
there is a God, — 5'et it is not necessary, concerning many things, 
to know that God hath revealed them : that is, we may be ignorant 
of, or doubt concerning the iH'opositions, and indifferently maintain 
either part, when the question is not concerning God's veracity, 
but whether God hath said so, or no ; that which is of the founda- 
tion of faith, that only is necessary." — Jeremy Taylor, Liberty 
of Prophesying, Section I. 

" Faith, as the comprehensive name for the higher ideal truths 
that have ever awakened the reverence and governed the religious 
development of man, requires ever and again to be cleared of the 
accessories that tend to surround and obscure it, — the parasites 
that tend to grow on its surface and live on its life. Men easily 
come to identify the accessories with the substance, the parasites 
with the organism, and to regard an assault on the injurious acci- 
dent as directed against the vital essence, even though it may have 
been due to a loyalty to the essence too great to spare the accident 
that injured it." — Principal Fairbairn, The City of God. 

". . . The Church which has lost all savor of rational thought — 
of the spirit which inquires, rather than asserts — is already effete 
and ready to perish." — Principal Tulloch, Rational Theology 
in England in the Seventeenth Century. 



INTRODUCTION. 




T was a saying of Professor Huxlej, 
in one of his American lectures, 
that " belief without evidence is 
not only illogical but immoral." 
Professor Huxley is not often care- 
less in the use of words. The full import, however, 
of those just quoted does not seem to have been 
well considered. The state of mind which they 
suppose is simply impossible. One cannot believe 
without evidence of some kind. The evidence may 
be insufficient or worthless, it may not have been 
seriously or carefully examined ; but if the belief 
be genuine, and not a false or idle affirmation 
of believing, it must rest upon something which 
has to the mind the nature of evidence. Even if 
the belief be nothing more than a blind assent to 
a theological or a scientific dogma, it has at least 
the support of an acknowledged authority. There 
are those who believed that Professor Huxley de- 
monstrated the descent of the horse from the hip- 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

parion. The evidence was not quite clear to the 
minds of all who listened ; but it was received by 
many at the time, simply because it was Professor 
Huxley who gave it. He would not say that their 
belief was both " illogical and immoral." 

But, however faulty in form, the saying of Profes- 
sor Huxley conveys a great truth. Every one is in 
some degree responsible for his beliefs. Whether 
in science or religion, he is morally bound to give 
his mind to some serious examination of the 
grounds on which they may securely rest. This 
is none the less true in respect of the religious 
belief which we o,^ faith; especially in times like 
these, when the records of Christianity are sub- 
jected to a closer scrutiny and under a clearer 
light of knowledge than heretofore. The demand 
upon the Christian teacher to-day is more impera- 
tive than ever, to draw attention to the foundations 
which cannot be moved, — to distinguish between 
the faith which has its unfailing support in the 
heart of man, and identifies itself with an evidence 
of reality unassailable by human reason, and the 
religious helief that depends upon traditions which 
may prove to be vain, and testimony which may 
be impeached. 

The word evidence^ in the Scripture definition 
of faith, is another word for proof. Faith is a 
persuasion resting upon proof. It is not a mere 

^ EXey^o^' — Heb. xi. 1. 



INTRODUCTION. \\ 

fancy, or imagining of " things unseen," but a 
strong persuasion of their reality, grounded in the 
perception and innermost consciousness of the indi- 
viduah Insomuch that to one who has this persua- 
sion, " the unseen things " in which he believes are 
as real, nay, more real, as more powerfully affecting 
the conduct, than the things which he sees with 
his natural eyes. 

This persuasion is often confounded with a men- 
tal assent to the reality of things which another 
has affirmed or narrated ; and this confusion has 
been the cause of much loose thinking and writing 
about relio'ious faith. The child helieves in the 
existence of God upon the declaration of his par- 
ent or teacher. In like manner he helieves in the 
existence of ghosts, upon the story of the house- 
maid ; or in fairies, upon the tales which have ex- 
ercised his childish imagination. But a belief 
resting solely upon testimony from without, which 
may or may not be valid, is quite unlike the per- 
suasion of unseen things which the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind. The proof 
of this is the witness within, — an inward per- 
ception or feeling of the truth and reality of its 
object. 

No one will deny that a true religious faith must 
have its origin in a belief grounded in some ex- 
ternal authority. The child listens to the story 
of Jesus, or reads it in the Bible, and believes it 



12 INTRODUCTION. 



to be true. But the belief does not become faith 
until the grace and truth of that life divine have 
found an abiding-place in the heart of the child. 
The Christian Church, as an authoritative witness 
and teacher of religious truth, may command as- 
sent to her creed concerning God ; but not until 
the heart of the believer goes out to Him in love 
and longing and worship, does this assent partake 
of the substance of the Christian grace of faith. 
There is a want within the soul itself which noth- 
ing less than the God of the Christian revelation 
can satisfy, — a conscious law of right and duty, 
which acknowledges none other source but the 
will Divine. 

Thus the faith in Christ arises when the believer 
sees in Plim the manifestation of the Divine in 
human life and character — the grace and truth 
which tell, more than all things visible in nature, 
o'f the one invisible Being whom we adore. This 
is the vision of faith of which Jesus spake when 
He said, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God." 

Christian faith, then, in this its innermost sub- 
stance, ^s that beholding of the Divme character and 
Divine purpose in the Christy which draws the dis- 
ciple to His side., in trust and love. The believer 
sees in Him the reality of an unseen^ spiritual 
life which he consciously shares, and which he 
1 " Seeing Him who is invisible." — Heb. xi. 27. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

is persuaded is above the conditions of this our 
frail and suffering mortality. He is persuaded, 
too, that this life has none other source than 
the invisible and eternal life of God. He be- 
lieves, not upon the revelation of " flesh and 
blood," 1 nor upon any external proof alone, — 
the authority of frail and fallible man, — but upon 
the testimony of the Spirit to his own spirit, 
in the reality and supreme excellency of " the 
things unseen," — the things pertaining to the Di- 
vine character, — the truth, the goodness, the wis- 
dom, and the love of God, — with all akin to 
these which enters into human life. Far tran- 
scending then, as it does, the mere assent of the 
mind to the truth of anything narrated, or claiming 
credence upon human testimony, — this, the grace 
of faith, will not be weakened or destroyed by a 
careful sifting of such testimony, nor yet by with- 
holding such assent where it cannot rationally be 
given. Faith has to do with realities, both objec- 
tive and subjective, which can never be discredited. 
The evidence of them appears in human life and 
character. The Christ of history lives again in 
the life of His disciples ; in the words of truth, 
and deeds of love, of all good men. Whatever 
belief may be theirs of a bodily resurrection, the 
unseen reality to them is the risen life of Christ 
itself. " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those 
1 Matt. xvi. 17. 



14 INTRODUCTION. 



things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the 
right hand of God." ^ The testimony of Jesus to 
the resurrection was addressed to the hearts of His 
disciples before the crucifixion. " I am the resur- 
rection and the life. Whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth on me, shall never die." To whatever 
sifting process of criticism the Gospel narrative 
may be subjected, the recorded words of Jesus will 
find their response in the heart, and be verified in 
the life, of every true believer. 

The lat^ Mr. John Stuart Mill is said to have 
spoken contemptuously of our Lord's discourses 
in the Gospel of St. John. Yet there are no re- 
corded words of Jesus wiiich have so stirred the 
hearts of men with emotions of commingled rever- 
ence and love as the last discourse in the Fourth 
Gospel. Whether they have come to us in the form 
which the Apostle bequeathed, or, as the critics con- 
jecture, are the redaction, by an Alexandrian disci- 
ple, of the original narrative, they no doubt convey 
the substance of those divine utterances on which 
the minds of the faithful were stayed, in the years 
immediately following their Lord's departure. And 
no human criticism can disturb the faith which 
they have so long nourished. 

It matters little whether we go to the dialogues 
of Plato or the Memorabilia of Xenophon for the 
wisdom of Socrates. The character of the man., 
1 Col. iii. 1. 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

embalmed in history, will be preserved in the ven- 
eration of good men forever. Nor will it be doubted 
that his disciples have conveyed to us the substance 
of the truth which they received from him. None 
the less secure in the heart of faith will be the 
testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ to Him 
as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

Spiritual sight is an act of the soul, moved upon 
by its innermost love. It is a gift of God that may 
be cherished or neglected. One who has not cher- 
ished it is simply incompetent to judge of the reali- 
ties upon which it is exercised ; as the uneducated 
intellect is unfit to pass an opinion upon Mr. Mill's 
treatise of Logic. Mr. Mill gives us to understand 
in his Autobiography that his early education was 
directed by his father with the deliberate purpose 
of making the development of a religious faith im- 
possible. From some of the interesting notices 
in the Diary of Caroline Fox the attempt of the 
parent does not seem to have been altogether suc- 
cessful. But the mournful effect of such early 
training may be traced in the scepticism of Mr. 
Mill's posthumous essays, notwithstanding the 
moral bias which appears in other works of his, 
on the humanitarian side of the teachings of Jesus. 
On its Godward side, Christianity, if not rejected, 
was received with but a dim and wavering faith. 
Of none the less value, however, is the tribute he 
pays to the efficacy of the Christian faith in words 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

quoted by Dean Stanley : ^ "It is the God incar- 
nate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, 
who, being idealized, has taken so great and salu- 
tary a hold on the modern mind. And whatever 
else may be taken away from us by rational criti- 
cism, Christ is still left, — a unique figure, not 
more unlike all His precursors than all His follow- 
ers, even those who had the direct benefit of His 
teaching." Chiefly from the life and words of 
Jesus, Christendom derives its thought and feeling 
of " One God, the Father Almighty." Through 
Him the ideal goodness is enshrined in the hearts 
of men. We know God by Him ; we see God in 
Him, — " He that seeth me, seeth Him that sent 
me." In the unity of the Spirit, He is one with 
the Father. Subjectively, this, the faith which we 
call Christian, has its sole support in the apprehen- 
sion of these spiritual verities. Clearly distinguish- 
able from the superstitious beliefs which have been 
associated and often confounded with it, it has en- 
tered largely into the ethical culture of the nations, 
begetting among them the spirit of filial and fra- 
ternal love which shall unite them in " one com- 
munion and fellowship " throughout the world. 
" That they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art 
in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one 
in us ; that the world may believe that Thou hast 
sent me, . . . that they may be one, even as we are 
1 Christian Institutions : The Creed of the early Christians. 



INTRODUCTION. 17 



one : I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be 
made perfect in one." ^ 

The conception of Christian faith which I have 
thus presented is a familiar one in the Protes- 
tant churches, and is conspicuous in some of the 
devotional writings of Roman Catholic divines. 
Nevertheless, it is overlaid by the traditions and 
authoritative teachings of both Protestants and 
Catholics. Bishop Pearson, the acknowledged au- 
thority on this subject in the Church of England, 
gives the following definition of Christian faith : 
" The true nature of the faith of a Christian, as the 
state of Christ's Church now stands, and shall con- 
tinue to the end of the world, consists in this, that it 
is an assent unto truths credible^ upon the testimony of 
Crod, delivered unto us in the writings of the Apostles 
and Prophets^ ^ Affirming the fallibility of human 
testimony, and its insufficiency as the ground of re- 
ligious faith, the Bishop assumes that the entire 
contents of Scripture are " the testimony of God." 
This assumption runs through all his reasoning. 
The distinction between a divine and a human 
element is quite ignored. The stress, moreover, is 
laid upon the recorded miracles, of Scripture, and 
not upon the evidence in its contents of moral and 
spiritual verities addressed to the reason and con- 
science of men. " As the Israelites believed those 
truths which Moses spake to come from God, 

1 St. John xvii. 21-23. ^ Pearson on the Creed. 

2 



• 18 INTRODUCTION. 



being convinced by the constant supply of miracles, 
wrought by the rod which he carried in his hand ; 
so the blessed Apostles, being so plentifully en- 
dued from above with the power of miracles, gave 
sufficient testimony that it was God who spake by 
their mouths, who so evidently wrought by their 
hands." 

Of this conception of Divine testimony, three 
things are to be noted, namely : 1. It is identified 
with the literal contents of a Book. 2. It is limited 
in time to a brief portion of human history. 3. It 
is authenticated only by miracles, performed by 
men who for near two thousand years have ceased 
to exist. The validity then of this testimony as 
the ground of Christian faith must depend upon 
the acceptance of these three conditions. We are 
constrained to say that if this be its chief support, 
Christianity is threatened with a loss in the civil- 
ized world which will not be matched by her future 
gains. 1. The plenary verbal inspiration of Scrip- 
ture is no longer affirmed by competent religious 
teachers. 2. Belief in its miracles is rapidly van- 
ishing before the knowledge of an undisturbed 
order of nature in the material world. 3. Belief 
in a God who has ceased to bear witness of Him- 
self, and who testifies unto men not otherwise than 
by the recorded miracles of a single people ages 
ago, will be as transient. Are the rulers in the 
Christian Church prepared to admit that, the three 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

conditions above-named failing, Christianity is to be 
entombed among the religions of the past ? Shall 
it not rather be said, that when beliefs decayed and 
waxen old have perished and been buried out of 
sight, the living spirit of our religion, still animat- 
ing the body of the faithful, shall appear in clearer 
light and mightier power to save ? 

We enter into no discussion here of the possi- 
bility of miracles, nor yet of the credibility of the 
Scripture narratives concerning them. We simply 
note the fact that the implicit belief of a half-cen- 
tury ago is fast giving place to a spirit of inquiry 
which already changes their relative value among 
the " evidences " of Christianity, and, in the minds 
of many, destroys that value altogether. This fact 
indicates very plainly the drift of opinion, both 
within and without the Church, among the masses 
of the people no less than among the educated and 
intelligent. In the best religious teaching of our 
day, miracles, as marvels of power addressed to the 
senses, are no longer appealed to in proof of the 
divine mission of Prophets and Apostles. They 
have their use chiefly in the ethical and spiritual 
meaning which may be drawn from them. Nay, the 
preaching which sets them aside as " evidences," and 
seeks to awaken the faith of men by opening their 
blind eyes to the glory revealed by the Spirit in 
the person of Christ, finds its warrant in the words 
of the Master Himself : " Except ye see signs and 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

wonders, ye will not believe." Israel's hope was 
indeed fullilled in Him. But His claim was only 
to a spiritual Messialiship. No reference is made 
by Him to any fact external, on which such claim 
could rest. There is not a word of a birth miracu- 
lous. He desired a faith which had no other proof 
than the witness of the Spirit to His sonship with 
the Father ; and "as many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become the sons of God." 

Scoffers there have always been, flouting the 
sacred record with its claim for a divine revelation. 
To-day it is the serious and reverent inquiry of 
religious minds whether that claim must not be 
made good by testimony solely addressed to the 
spiritual nature of man ; whether the popular be- 
liefs must not be recast, lest they be rudely de- 
stroyed ; whether, in the interest of the Christian 
faith itself, the teachers of religion must not them- 
selves remove the stumbling-block which the letter 
of Scripture has cast in the way. 

The Church of Rome confounds the faith of a 
Christian with implicit assent to whatever she 
affirms to be true. Cardinal Newman tells us, in 
his " Grammar of Assent," that the instant a be- 
liever begins to inquire of such truth, he parts with 
his faith. The inquiry implies doubt ; and he who 
doubts no longer believes. It is from this con- 
founding of faith with belief that the serious mis- 
giving arises in the minds of many who accept 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

without reserve the moral and spiritual teachings 
of Christianity, but reject some of its traditional 
beliefs, whether they may honestly confess the 
Christian faith before men. Is it not well to con- 
sider the loss which the Church may sustain from 
the exclusion of this class of persons ? 

Faith is indeed the assent of the mind to things 
credible, upon the testimony of God. But the 
Divine witness is borne in upon the mind, not 
chiefly through the avenues of sense, but directly 
to the reason, the conscience, the heart of the 
believer. A materializing science can make no 
headway against a religious teaching which gives 
to this inward evidence of things unseen its true 
place. It may demolish the supports of a tradi- 
tionary belief, whose chief ground is the authority 
of an infallible Church or the letter of an infalUble 
Book ; but it cannot touch the proof of unseen 
things that is lodged in the heart of a good man. 
If science (which is the true knowledge not merely 
of phenomena, but of all realities) could do this, 
then its antagonism to religion might well be 
thought alarming. In every thought of the uni- 
verse God must be left out. In every attempt at 
moral government, the binding force of duty — the 
voice within, commanding what is right — must 
be ignored. 

There are those who contemplate very calmly a 
change like this in the constitution of human society. 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

Others there are who believe that the prevailing 
tendency of what is called " modern thought " is 
in this direction. Certainly the educated intellect 
of the world is less religious in seeming than it 
once was. Priestly influence is declining, except 
where ignorance prevails. Men are not now in 
bondage to their fears, as in former days. The 
mysterious efficacy of religious rites is more se- 
verely questioned, the truth of theological dogmas 
more openly doubted ; and it may be asked, What 
is to be the issue of these things ? — a question 
of graver moment perhaps in the Old World than in 
the New ; for there, society having settled upon its 
lees, the fermentation of new ideas is causing a 
more dangerous effervescence. The surface more 
thickly crusted over with traditional abuses, the 
upheaval threatened is the more violent. And so 
it is that under the reactionary influence of the 
religious element we have seen conservative Prot- 
estantism in sympathy with the expelled Jesuits, 
and thousands flocking to the shrine of Our Lady 
of Lourdes, — the clergy encouraging this popular 
delusion, and interpreting it as the omen of a 
newly awakened faith. 

Alas for the future of the Christian Church if 
its hope be stayed upon this brief spasm of a dying 
superstition ! Credulity is not faith. If religious 
belief have no other basis than miracles, it must 
soon pass away, or be abandoned as the possession 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

of a class feeble in its ignorance, and every day 
becoming weaker before a rapidly spreading intelli- 
gence. Nor will its interests be served by the 
teachers of religion who cling to this support, 
either honestly believing that the truths of revela- 
tion must be always thus authenticated, or dishon- 
estly seeking by these arts to maintain a power 
long established, and now in danger of a speedy 
overthrow.^ 

If the truth were really known, these false or 
mistaken defenders of the faith have really joined 
hands with the materializing philosophers in the 
assumption that there is no better method of veri- 
fying their belief than this appeal to the senses. 
They both tell us that Christianity must stand or 
fall with our acceptance or rejection of miracles. 
They differ in afhrming on the one side, and deny- 
ing on the other, the fact of miracles. And the 
fate of our religion is thought to hang upon the 
issue. 

In the Roman Church it is an article of faith 
that the gift of miracles is perpetual. Protestants 
generally believe it was withdrawn some time in 
the second or third century of the Christian era. 

^ It is not alone in Roman Catholic countries that the 
popular suspicion of insincerity among the clergy is increasing ; 
and it is a melancholy sign of the decadence of religious faith 
when the rulers of a church continue to teach what they no 
longer believe. 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

If belief in miracles is based upon human testi- 
mony, the Catholic position is quite as tenable as 
the Protestant. If it depend upon a ^priori reason- 
ing, it is still stronger. For God does not change, 
either in power or purpose ; and there is quite as 
much need to convince the ignorant and unbeliev- 
ing by miracle to-day, as there was in the early 
days of the Christian Church. Both Protestants 
and Catholics unite in making this the corner-stone 
in the whole fabric of Christian belief. And the 
materialist is triumphing already in the hope that, 
this support being withdrawn, the whole must 
tumble into ruins. 

If the fate of our religion does indeed hang upon 
an issue like this, then the time is not far distant 
when the Christian faith will be confined to the 
ignorant, the credulous, and the superstitious, mas- 
tered by the tyranny of a corrupt priesthood. 
Christianity, to hold its place in the minds of 
honest and thoughtful men, must have its creden- 
tials in realities which can be verified. Its truths, 
to be received, must be susceptible of proof which 
defies criticism, and is accessible to all who do not 
purposely set their minds against it. They must 
address this proof to the reason, the conscience, 
and the affections of men. It is the glory of our 
religion, and the pledge of its perpetuity in the 
world, that it has within itself this proof ; and that 
wherever its great central doctrines are proclaimed 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

thej carry with themselves, to good and honest 
hearts, the testimony to their truth. 

The Church is at a great disadvantage when she 
fails to present this as the chief support of the 
Christian faith. Since the days of Paley she has 
been heavily handicapped, in her conflict with un- 
belief, by an appeal to miracles as credible upon 
human testimony. With the changing habits of 
thought which have come through modern dis- 
covery, and the freer and more enlightened criti- 
cism of Scripture, the method of Paley has appeared 
more and more faulty. We hear it said now, that 
if miracles do not prove Christianity, Christianity 
itself is the proof of miracles. Why attempt to 
prove miracles if we have the Christian faith with- 
out them ? 

The late Mr. Morgan, some time president of 
the American Association of Natural Science, said 
to a friend, a short time before his death, " My 
heart is with the Christian religion." Notwith- 
standing the well-known disbelief of Mr. Morgan 
in the miracles of the Bible, those words were re- 
peated over his grave by that friend, the officiating 
minister, as the dying confession of a Christian 
faith. On what grounds may such a confession be 
rejected by any one who claims authority in the 
Church to represent the Master Himself ? 

The question is every day becoming a more 
serious one ; for the number of educated and 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

thoughtful persons whose attitude toward the 
Christian religion is like the one I have described, 
is rapidly increasing. If they are to be denied the 
privileges of membership in the Church and ex- 
cluded from her ministry, then must her hope of 
future conquests be surrendered. Her relation to 
the progressive thought of the world must be 
wholly changed. Antagonism must take the place 
of reconciliation, as the Church of Rome, indeed, 
has had the consistency to declare. 

On the other hand, if the persons I have de- 
scribed are admitted to the Church and allowed 
their share in shaping its future, it is evident that 
the dogmatic expression of the Christian faith must 
undergo some change, and a freer handling of its 
records and formularies be permitted, without the 
hazard of ecclesiastical prosecution. 

The issue is distinctly made between a formal 
and a spiritual Christianity. Already in our own 
communion the lines are sharply drawn between 
the two schools of thought, which lay the stress, 
respectively, vl'^qh faith and the faith, — the one rep- 
resenting implicit submission to external authority, 
the other the duty of free inquiry ; the one affirm- 
ing certitude and infallibility in a visible Church, 
the other the promised guidance of a divine spirit 
of truth to the individual believer. It is not denied 
that each of these schools is supplemental to the 
other. Authoritative teaching is needful for the 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

young and the ignorant. But the limitations of 
authority must be recognized, and it must itself 
submit to the adjustment which the ever-growing 
knowledge of truth demands. Spiritual religion will 
find expression in ritual and in dogma, but cannot 
be imprisoned in forms, inflexible and unchanging, 
without the loss of its vitality. 

The Reformation witnessed to the supreme value 
of that which is spiritual in our religion, to tlie 
necessity of faith as a living principle within, the 
apprehension of the things of God and of Christ, 
and the choice of them in the heart of the believer. 
This, the witness of the spirit to the truth and the 
life, has an authority paramount to any external 
authority whatsoever, though not denying nor ex- 
cluding the office of such authority ; insomuch that 
if the collective body of the Church shall affirm a 
thing to be true which the mind must hold to be 
false, or declare a thing to be right which the con- 
science reproves, then assent to the authority of 
the Church is not only not faith, but an abandon- 
ment of faith. 

How far shall the inviolability of this inner prin- 
ciple be guarded ? And what relation must it bear 
to the Church's external system of doctrine and 
worship ? Upon her decision of these questions 
will depend the future character of the Protestant 
Episcopal church. If she is to hold her place as a 
Protestant body, then not only will the superior 



28 INTRODUCTION. 

value of the spiritual element in our religion be 
recognized, but this mnst dominate the external. 
For the Reformation witnessed also to the imperfec- 
tion of the external both in doctrine and worship, 
to the existence of error, to the wisdom of change, 
to the necessity of growth, to the supremacy of 
conscience. This relation between the inward and 
the visible must be maintained. The variable must 
be distinguished from the constant in the knov/ledge 
of religious truth. The never-ceasing guidance of 
the Divine Spirit of truth must be acknowledged, 
and therefore the imperfection of formulated beliefs 
in any given time. St. Paul at one time knew Jesus 
Christ after the fiesli.^ He knew him later, more 
truly, after the spirit. The change to the superior 
knowledge may be traced in his Epistles. Intelli- 
gent Christians were emancipated from a grievous 
burden of error a few hundred years ago. The 
time has not yet come in which there is no need 
to assert their freedom. They must have leave to 
inquire, ■ — leave to doubt the truth of many things 
to which others cling, through ignorance or custom 
or inertia. Must this liberty be exercised at tlie 
cost of exclusion, or of schism in the body ? 

It is a question for the individual conscience, 

whether loyalty to one's convictions of truth can 

be reconciled with external relations already formed 

and with duties which those relations impose. 

1 2 Cor. V. 16. 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

There are those who believe that no such rec- 
onciliation is possible. Mr. Stopf orcl Brooke so 
believed, and finally separated himself from the 
Church in which he was reared, and from breth- 
ren whom he loved. Others holding similar opin- 
ions, and no less conscientious than he, remain ; 
rightly, as they believe, exercising the freedom 
of honest inquiry with their inherited " liberty of 
prophesying," but deprecating the evils of separa- 
tion, so abundantly illustrated in the Church's 
history. They distinguish between the substance 
and the form of the Christian faith, — between the 
constant and the variable in religious beliefs. They 
believe that as changes have been made in times 
past, so they will continue to be made in the future, 
and always in the direction of the freedom which 
is needful to the maintenance of a unity of the 
spirit in the bond of peace. The forms of worship 
and formularies of doctrine authoritatively set 
forth they will continue to use, though some of 
them may be disapproved, in the hope of a larger 
discretion, that shall mediate between the right of 
private judgment and the duty of submission to 
external authority. Conservators of order in the 
visible Church, in the belief of a Divine order in 
the universe, they will claim for themselves the 
liberty of thought and of word which may consist 
with that order, and without which it must inevi- 
tably be broken. They will therefore, in the light 



30 INTRODUCTION. 

of an ever-increasing knowledge, and with a firm 
reliance upon the wisdom from above, interpret the 
sacred records of the Church, with her standards 
of doctrine, and draw out the truth, as they best 
can, for • themselves and others. If in this they 
incur the censure of the Church, they will bear the 
odium which it brings, though never teaching what 
they believe to be untrue, and never withholding 
the testimony which they believe the truth itself 
demands. 

The Church of England has always recognized, 
within certain limits, this liberty. It has been 
vindicated by some of her most eminent divines. 
The thirty-nine articles have been variously inter- 
preted. The creeds have not the same meaning 
to all, nor the same meaning to many now which 
they once had to all. " The resurrection of the 
body" is no longer taught by intelligent divines 
as it was taught and believed by those who framed 
the article. The birth of Jesus and His divine 
sonship are interpreted by many rather in the light 
of the opening words of Paul's Epistle to the Ro- 
mans than after the narrative of St. Luke's Gospel. 
And the whole of Scripture is no longer read by 
enlightened men in the once universally received 
notion of a plenary verbal inspiration. It is read 
in the churches, as appointed ; but it is interpreted 
as the spi^^it giveth understanding. 

A liberty thus consisting with order is essential 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

to the existence of a church that would maintain 
its character as " the pillar- and ground of truth." 
If it be not established by formal decisions and 
positive acts of authority, it must be recognized by 
the silent acquiescence of men appointed .to rule. 
Surely it cannot be denied to the teaching which 
would commend the substance of Christian truth 
to the growing intelligence of the age, and yet con- 
ceded to reactionary influences in the direction of 
abandoned errors. No doubt these influences have 
found their stimulus in the freedom of thought 
already exercised, and the fears which it has 
awakened. Some have been frightened, as Car- 
dinal Newman was, by imaginary breakers ahead, 
and have changed their course for an anchorage 
secure enough, indeed, from wind and wave in the 
stagnant waters of the Church of Rome. Others 
are hoping for some strong ebb-tide of slavish belief 
which shall float them back to medieval ignorance 
and superstition. 

Physiologists tell us of a law of nature by which, 
along with the variations which appear from time 
to time in any form of organic life, there is a ten- 
dency to return to the original type. The like 
phenomenon is beheld in institutions both civil and 
religious. In the primitive Church there was a 
Judaizing element stoutly resisted by St. Paul, but 
appearing with persistent force in every age of the 
Church that followed. It seems a strange anomaly 



32 INTRODUCTION. 

to many, that intelligent persons, born and bred 
Protestants, should become Roman Catholics ; and 
stranger still that in our own communion the sim- 
plicity of the gospel and the distinctively spiritual 
teachings of Christianity should yield to a diluted 
mixture of doctrine and ceremonial, which at the 
best is but a feeble imitation of Rome. But these 
kindred facts are the ground of a confident hope 
that the whole body of believing Christians will 
ultimately find rest and shelter in the bosom of 
their ancient mother. Nor would a hope like this 
be altogether delusive but for the law of the spirit 
of life, which is also a law in the Christian Church, 
even as the law of variation, of growth, and devel- 
opment is perpetually asserting itself in nature. 

It is the failure to observe the presence of this 
law of spiritual life which is the stay of a hope so 
groundless. Wherever it is fairly operative in 
churches, the tendency I have referred to, though 
reappearing, will be resisted. As we find, on the 
whole, in the social and civil conditions of the race 
the unmistakable signs of progress, so in the 
Christian Church we may look for the develop- 
ment of spiritual life, under ever-changing forms, 
adapted to the perpetually changing conditions of 
its existence. Eddies and counter-currents there 
will be that appear to the careless looker-on like 
a setting of the tide backward, but the river will 
be ever rolling onward to the sea. 



Coming of ttje ^ou of jfEan. 



THE EVIDENCE OF FAITH. 




COMING OE THE SON OF MAN.^ 

^^Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall He 
find faith on the earth ? " — St. Luke xviii. 8. 

T is related of the Scotch philoso- 
pher Hume, that, dining once 
in Paris with a party of French 
Encyclopaedists, he expressed a 
doubt whether an atheist, prop- 
erly so called, could be found. One of the 
party immediately answered, " Count us." 
Whereupon, of the nineteen persons present, 
sixteen avowed their disbelief in the existence 
of God. Undoubtedly, the spread of atheistic 
opinions at this time was one of the causes of 
the great political and social upheaval which 
followed in France, and which shook all Eu- 

1 Preached at Staten Island, Advent, 1883. 



36 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 

rope from centre to circumference. But these 
opinions, it must be confessed, were partly 
due to a violent reaction from the false and 
hollow-hearted professions of religious faith 
in the body which outwardly represented the 
Christian Church. Virtue stood aghast at 
the spectacle of a dissolute clergy lending 
the sanctities of religion to the abuses of 
power. It is not strange that a belief mis- 
directed, contradicted, and falsified, in the life 
of men appointed to illustrate it, should be 
obscured, and at length suffer for a time an 
almost total eclipse. The day of the Son of 
Man was drawing near to the nation, — a day 
of judgment for its sins, — a day of sorrow 
and great darkness, of tribulation and an- 
guish, — in which the faith even of the elect 
should waver, and good men should doubt of 
the coming of the kingdom of God on the 
earth. Most fitly do the words of Jesus fore- 
telling the doom of Jerusalem describe the 
approaching reign of terror. Not in the 
range of modern history do we find a condi- 
tion of things so aptly illustrating those 
remarkable discourses of our Lord to His 
disciples, of a coming judgment. He himself 



COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 37 

goes back to the days of Noah and the days of 
Lot for a parallel. As men were overtaken 
then in their iniquities, so should the Son of 
Man be revealed in the years to come. In the 
prevailing corruption of morals, in the relig- 
ious hypocrisy which He so vehemently as- 
sailed, in the spirit of evil which antagonized 
the grace and truth of the gospel. He saw the 
portents of the coming storm. 

He beheld also the share of His disciples 
in the approaching calamities, — their tribula- 
tion in the world, — their persecution, their 
terror, their flight, their doubts, and their 
fears, in the midst of all ^' those things which 
were coming on the earth." A sore trial of 
their faith awaited them in the power of evil 
to hurt them, in the spectacle of innocence 
confounded with guilt in a common suffering. 
In almost the same words He pictures the im- 
pending judgments of the wicked, and the 
fiery trial of the righteous. Fulfilled as they 
were in the days that soon followed, they also 
foretell of a coming of the Son of Man, in 
every judgment upon the world's iniquity, 
until the last great day of His appearing. 

Now Jesus seeks to fortify the faith of His 



38 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN 

disciples, that the hand of God may be seen 
not only in every blessing, but also in every 
judgment ; that whatever may appear in the 
world about them as the unmistakable pen- 
alty of transgression, or whatever seeming 
impunity sin may for a time enjoy, whatever 
trouble and distress may come from any cause 
upon themselves, they may rest in the calm 
assurance that the right and the truth of God 
shall be ultimately established and vindicated 
before the world. 

Such was the faith which Jesus sought to 
inspire in His disciples. It was their confi- 
dence in a certain divine order in the moral 
universe, the effect of which should appear in 
their own character and disposition of mind. 
They were to accept what might come in 
all submission as to the Divine will, patiently 
waiting for its manifestation ; obedient to 
the voice within ; always hopeful, and never 
doubtful that this order is wise and just and 
good. When the Son of Man cometh, shall 
He find a faith like this on the earth ? It is a 
question for the day and the hour in which 
we live, not for idle speculation as to what 
may appear in some final catastrophe of the 



COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 39 

world's history. It is a question for iis^ what 
side we are taking in the great issues between 
good and evil that are dividing men to-day. 
What is our hope, our trust, and our confi- 
dence ? The Son of Man cometh in an hour 
when we think not. The life of to-day has 
its duties, its trials, its tragedies. What part 
are we bearing in them all ? The word of 
truth which Christ has spoken. He is speaking 
now in our own hearts. This word is our 
judge to-day. The Son of Man is already 
sitting in judgment upon our thoughts, upon 
our motives, upon the purpose that shall 
govern our deeds, whether they be good or 
whether they be evil. 

The question of Jesus is an intimation of 
times very close at hand, and all along through 
the world's history, yea, and of times in the life 
of every true believer, when faith itself should 
waver, — times of temptation, times of trouble, 
times of difficulty, when the thought of God 
and the will of God and the very present help 
of God should be wellnigh lost in the thought 
of self. In the face of what sometimes seems 
to be an overwhelming power of evil, and in 
the absence of any visible tokens of the might- 



40 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 

ier spirit of God, it is not strange that tlie 
faith of good men should be shaken and need 
to be assured. 

Jesus does not mean that faith shall dis- 
appear from the earth \ that were a contra- 
diction of His own declared belief in the 
coming glories of God's kingdom. We can- 
not believe that the divine spirit of truth 
will ever be withdrawn from the hearts of 
men, and the world be left to the darkness 
and confusion of a spiritual chaos. The 
outlook of the believer is always to the 
new heavens and the new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness. Only the horizon is 
clouded often, and the air is filled with por- 
tents of approaching evil. The storm-tossed 
soul is struggling among the billows. He who 
alone can say to them, " Peace, be still ! " is 
asleep in the vessel, and the cry is heard, 
" Master, carest Thou not that we perish? " 

Or the soul is like the widow in the para- 
ble, who comes before the judge imploring 
justice against the adversary who has wronged 
her. For a time she seems to implore in vain. 
In the heart of the judge there is no sympathy 
with her bereavement, no pity for her distress, 



. COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 41 

no indignation at the injustice from whicli she 
suffers. Her prayer is the prayer of the faith- 
ful in the days of their mourning, when the 
bridegroom is taken from them, when the 
blasphemy of the multitude is heard, and fear 
is on every side ; when the scoffer mocks at 
their calamity, saying, '' Where is now thy 
God ? " It is the prayer of the poor and the 
oppressed, the desolate and the friendless, 
that has never ceased to be poured into the 
ear of God, and waits, alas ! it would seem 
too long, for an answer. '' The very present 
help in time of trouble " does not come in the 
form besought. " So I returned, and consid- 
ered all the oppressions that are done under 
the sun ; and behold the tears of such as were 
oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on 
the side of their oppressors there was power ; 
but they had no comforter." The time has 
not yet come when the words of the Preacher 
have ceased to be verified. The rule of a 
righteous God on earth is still among the 
things to be prayed for. Is it strange that 
where the prayer is made so often with the 
lips, while the heart is but feebly stirred to 
reprove the world's injustice, thoughtful men 



42 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 

should question the efficacy of a rehgious 
faith, and themselves begin to doubt whether 
there be a God who answers prayer, or has any 
part at all in the affairs of earth and time ? 

" Wherefore," says the afflicted Job, " do 
the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty 
in power ? Their seed is established in their 
sight, and their offspring before their eyes. 
Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, 
for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. 
What is the Almighty that we should serve 
Him, and what profit should we have if we 
pray unto Him ? " 

Alas ! how fitly do these words of Job de- 
scribe the practical atheism that appears in 
the world to-day, even where the forms of a 
religious faith are maintained. Yet, if we look 
back upon the world's history, as Jesus looked 
back upon the days of Noah and of Lot, we 
find that times of long impunity in wicked- 
ness, which have tried the faith of good men, 
have always been followed by the judgments 
of God, which, though long deferred, have 
been slowly gathering against it. 

But whatever may appear to the eye, of 
things about us, or whatever proofs we behold 



COMING OF THE SON OF MAN 43 

of an avenging justice in history, the faith in 
God that shall stand the test in the day of 
trial, and shall triumph over all the doubts 
and fears that may assail it, is the faith that 
has its witness in the heart of the good man 
himself, in his own hatred of injustice, in his 
own love of that which is right. This alone 
is the divine and the eternal, the very sub- 
stance of the God whom he worships. This 
was the faith of Job, that survived the fiery 
trial to which he was subjected, — " Though 
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. He also 
shall be my salvation." Conscious of his in- 
tegrity, he exclaims, '' Behold now I have 
ordered my cause, I know that I shall be 
justified." And, again, '^ I know that my 
Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at 
the latter day upon the earth." Job believed in 
God. " The root of the matter " was in him; 
the love of the righteousness of God. That 
he had made his own. Like the Psalmist after 
him, he could come before God in the sincer- 
ity of truth itself, and say, " Hear the right, 
Lord, attend unto my cry, give ear unto 
my prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips." 
Before God I believe there is no other faith 



44 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 

than this, that will endure in the days of 
doubt and unbelief that are to come ; none 
other that will stand in the day of His ap- 
pearing, — as appear He will, to judge the 
world in righteousness. 

Atheism, — what is it but the love of self 
that masters the love of right, that covets and 
courts the wealth that is gained by fraud and 
intrenched in power ? What is it but acqui- 
escence in wrongs that exist by prescription 
and are protected by law? And faith, — what 
is that but the heart's desire for the divine in 
character, in life, — the divine that revealed 
itself in Jesus, in His hatred of shams and of 
all iniquities, in His love for the things that 
were just and true and beautiful in the lives 
of men ? 

" That seeking for a God there ^ and not here — 
everywhere outwardly, and not inwardly in 
our own soul, where alone He is to be found 
by us — begins to get wearisome. Above 
all," continues the same prophetic voice,^ 
speaking to us in our own day and genera- 
tion, — "above all, that faint-possible Theism, 
which now forms our common English creed, 

1 Carlyle's Essay on Diderot. 



COMING OF THE SON OF MAN 45 

cannot be too soon swept out of the world. 
What is the nature of that individual who 
with hysterical violence asserts a God, per- 
haps a revealed symbol and worship of God; 
and for the rest, in thought, word, and con- 
duct, meet with him where you will, is foimd 
living as if his theory were some polite figure 
of speech, and his theoretical God a mere dis- 
tant Simulacrum, with whom he for his part 
has nothing further to do ? Fool ! The Eter- 
nal is no Simulacrum ; God is not only there, 
but here, or nowhere, — in that life-breath of 
thine, in that act and thought of thine ^ and 
thou wert wise to look to it. 

" If there is no God, as the fool hath said in 
his heart, then live on with thy decencies and 
lip homage, and inward greed and falsehood, 
and all the hollow, cunningly devised halfness 
that recommends thee to the mammon of this 
world ; if there is a God, look to it ! But in 
either case, what art thou ? The Atheist is 
false. Yet is there, as we see, a fraction of 
truth in him ; he is true compared with thee : 
thou, unhappy mortal, livest wholly in a lie, 
art wholly a lie." 

There are some beliefs very closely associated 



46 COMING OF THE SON OF MAN. 

with a Christian faith, and bj many thought 
to be identified with it, which good men are 
compelled, in their conviction of the truth 
itself, to surrender. And if the faith of the 
sincerest Christian in a living present God, 
evidenced by the visible proofs about him, 
be sometimes found to waver, we may not 
wonder that this evidence is insufficient to 
meet the doubts and questionings that assail 
the understanding. But where the heart it- 
self remains secure in its possession of those 
truths and those affections which we have 
learned to be divine, and which furnish of 
themselves the surest title to the Christian 
name, there the citadel of the Christian faith 
is unassailed. No one who loves the truth 
and does the right, can ever lose his faith in a 
true and righteous God; for, whether he 
knows it or not, God is with him, working in 
him to will and to do of His good pleasin-e. 

The bereaved Lady Cavendish, in answer 
to a clergyman who desired permission to 
dedicate to her a sermon on the tragedy of 
her husband's death, expressed the hope that 
before sending it to the printer he would look 
carefully through it to see " if it contains any 



COMING OF THE SON OF MAN 47 

expression of desire for vengeance." " The 
law/' she adds, " must take its course ; but I 
pray that neither the unspeakable greatness 
of my sorrow nor the terrible wickedness of 
those men may ever blind either myself 
or any of the English people to the duty 
of patience, justice, and sympathy in our 
thoughts, words, and deeds with regard to 
Ireland and its people at large." 

There is the prayer of faith ; there speaks 
the heart of one whose trust is in God in the 
hour of her sorest affliction. The widow in 
the parable prayed for vengeance upon her 
enemy. The widow in the story of Christian 
life which we read to-day prays for justice 
and sympathy, not for herself, but for the thou- 
sands of suffering people who are confounded 
with the guilty men who have brought 
distress upon her. Most beautiful attestation 
of the Christian faith ! witnessing to the pres- 
ence of that divine spirit of justice and mercy 
which shall rule in the hearts of men. This^ 
let us hope, will be the faith which the Son of 
Man, when He cometh, shall find on the earth. 
God grant that this faith may be our own ! 



n. 
fi)^ (Scriptures for our Itearning. 




II. 

THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING.^ 

" Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written 
for our learning.''^ — Rom. xv. 4. 

T becomes my duty, as it is also 
my pleasure, to speak to you 
once more about the Bible. 
The subject is presented to us 
in the Collect and Epistle which 
the Church has appointed for the Second 
Sunday in Advent, sometimes called Bible 
Sunday. It is in the spirit of this prayer 
and Scripture that I trust we may all ap- 
proach it, not seeking to confirm ourselves 
in opinions that may be erroneous, but se- 
riously and devoutly desiring to learn only 
the truth. 

The Scriptures are given for our learning, 
not for the blind and idolatrous worship of 

1 Staten Island, 1883. 



52 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 

the book which includes them. They are 
therefore to be studied carefully, with all the 
helps of the best scholarship and the wisest 
interpretation of their contents that are possi- 
ble. One who despises these helps, or who 
refuses to use them when available, can in no 
proper sense be said to learn the Scriptures. 
Nor can such an one sincerely repeat the 
words of the prayer which the Church ap- 
points for the day. 

The Christian Church has always suffered, 
and suffers still, for the w^ant of this learning. 
I do not mean, in saying this, to disparage 
the wdsdom and piety of good men who have 
been guided hitherto by the Spirit in the 
study of Scripture. The truth revealed in its 
pages has been the saving powder of the world 
for many ages. Its witness to the reality of a 
Divine Providence in the history of Israel has 
largely helped to shape the life of other na- 
tions, and to establish the reign of justice and 
equity in the earth. The hearts of the dis- 
obedient have been turned to the wisdom of 
the just, and infant lips have been taught to 
lisp its petitions in prayer to the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How can 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 53 

we forget the " sweet story of old," that has 
cheered the heart and inspired the hope of 
generations come and gone since first it was 
told by those who knew of the grace and 
truth which came from the Master whom they 
loved, and was then recorded for the love of 
all who might hear and repeat it, to the end 
of time ? To have learned this story by heart, 
and to have treasured it there, so that the 
spirit and the life of the Master shall appear 
as the fruit of such precious seed, is more than 
all the wisdom of earth. May God forbid 
that learning like this shall be hindered by 
the further knowledge of the truth concern- 
ing the Bible, which the more careful and 
critical study of its pages by scholars may 
bring. 

But one truth can never destroy or neu- 
tralize another. The spirit and the life of 
Scripture will not vanish by subjecting the 
letter to a reverent criticism. Like the re- 
fining processes of art, which detect and 
remove the crudities and coarser materials 
of the substance to which they are applied, 
that this may be rendered purer, and fitter 
for uses of good, the critical process of schol- 



54 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 

ars in the study of Scripture will analyze and 
separate the truth from the error which has 
always attended the reading of it; releasing 
the spirit, and making it freer than ever in 
its regenerating work among men. We have 
only to read the history of the Christian 
Church itself, to see how this work has been 
hindered in the world by the blinding and 
enslaving manner in which the Scriptures 
have been read. How often have they been 
used to justify the cruelties and barbarities 
which have disfigured her fair form, even as 
the visage of her Lord '^was marred more 
than any man, and His form more than the 
sons of men." And still, in the rancor and 
ill-feeling with which bigotry assails an honest 
speaking of the truth in love, may be seen 
the need of rescuing the spirit of that truth 
in the Scriptures from the blinding idolatry 
of the letter. 

Men must be free then to examine the 
Scriptures, and interpret them in the light 
of the best knowledge which science and the 
closest scrutiny of their contents can bestow. 
With all that good men have learned in times 
past, and all that we know of its teaching to- 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 55 

day, there is a vast deal more that we have 
yet to learn of the history of the Bible, of 
the various books which compose it, of the 
men who wrote it, of the times in which 
it was written, and of the people to whom 
its words were addressed. The truth con- 
cerning these is necessary, that we may 
know the true value of Scripture, the rela- 
tion of one part to another, the meaning 
of its prophecies and of many of the words 
of Jesus ; that we may distinguish fact 
from fiction, poetry from prose, legend 
from history, tradition and speculation from 
revelation. 

The Bible contains all these, as the most 
pious and most learned of the scholars who 
are now making it their study are every day 
telling us ; and these studies of theirs, while 
they will never take away the spiritual truth 
which God reveals in its pages, are scattering 
the false theories of inspiration which have 
clouded the minds of men in the reading of 
it. They are letting in the sunlight, so that 
much that was dark and mysterious will be 
clearly understood, much that was the pro- 
duct of men's thought and belief in ages of 



36 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING, 

ignorance- and superstition will be swept 
away. 

The Bible is the literature of a nation 
passing through all the various stages of 
a religious belief, from a barbarous fetich- 
ism up to a pure and spiritual monotheism, 

— an enlightened faith in the one true 
God. 

Now what reception shall we give to the 
helps which the more recent scholarship of 
the Christian Church is affording us? Shall 
we refuse to read the works of such men 
as the late Dean Stanley of the Church of 
England; of Robertson Smith, of the Scot- 
tish Presbyterian Church; of Coleridge and 
Dr. Arnold, of Maurice and Archbishop 
Whateley, who opened the way before them ; 
of Bunsen and Ewald and Kuenen and others, 

— the accepted authorities in Biblical criticism 
in England and Scotland, in Germany and 
Holland ? Shall we say to ourselves that we 
will cling to our old notions and traditions 
about the Bible, which have long been a 
stumbling-block in the way of any honest 
inquiry after the truth, and are doing to-day 
a thousand times more than such inquiry, for 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 57 

the increase of infidelity and the growth of 
irrehgion ? 

Or shall we thankfully accept these helps 
to the learning of what God's word and God's 
truth really are in the Bible ? I would say 
not one word for a study of the Bible that is 
destructive to the Christian faith. I plead 
only for a knowledge of its contents that shall 
prove the support of that faith. I would sep- 
arate the kernel of the Word from the husk 
in which it has been enclosed, that it may 
become to us more than ever as the bread 
of life. 

We read in St Luke, that when Jesus 
went through the fields with His disciples, 
they plucked the ears of corn and did eat, 
rubbing the ears in their hands. Now the 
Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New 
Testament, are as truly a growth as the corn 
whose ears the disciples plucked and' rubbed 
in their hands. They contain the truth con- 
cerning God and human life, as this truth 
has been slowly and gradually forming in the 
minds and hearts of men, under the revealing 
and vitalizing power of the Spirit of God. It 
is a growth from a germ divinely planted in a 



58 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 

very early stage of the world's history. We can 
trace it in the Bible, all along from Abraham to 
Moses, and from Moses to the Prophets, and 
from the Prophets unto Christ ; just as we can 
follow the growth of the grain that we cast into 
the earth, — first the blade, then the ear, after 
that the full corn in the ear. And then we 
can see how the good seed which the Sower 
Himself scattered, appeared in the recorded 
truth of the Epistles and Gospels. 

Now this truth concerning God and human 
life bears the same relation to the books 
of Scripture that the seed bears to the plant 
which produces it. It is the seed which is 
good for food, and not the stalk or the hull, 
however necessary these may be to the growth 
and preservation of the seed. Even so we 
must distinguish the spirit or seed of God's 
word, in the Scriptures, from the letter which 
bears it ; remembering, too, that much in the 
letter is of the earth, earthy, — showing very 
plainly the nature and quality of the soil in 
which the seed was planted ; giving proof, 
often, of limited knowledge, of human in- 
firmity, the ignorance and superstition of the 
times in which the writers lived. 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 59 

It is the office of a reverent criticism of the 
Bible to make this distinction. The scholars 
who are walking through the fields with the 
Master are plucking the ears of corn and 
rubbing them in their hands. It is a process 
of separating the husk from the kernel. And 
we need not fear the result ; for it will tell 
lis, better than ever, what is good for food, 
and help to prepare it for us, that we may 
truly eat thereof and be nourished by the 
bread of life. And what is this bread but 
the knowledge of God in Christ taken into 
our hearts by faith ? 

'' Lord, evermore give us this bread ! '' In 
spirit and in truth would we make the prayer 
which the people blindly made of Jesus in 
the hope that He would give them a sign 
from heaven, working a miracle before their 
eyes ere they could believe. And when He 
refused that sign, and told them that He was 
the bread of life which came down from 
heaven, and that no one who came to Him 
to do, as He did, the Father's will, should 
hunger, — though they saw Him and heard 
Him, yet they believed not. " How is it that 
He saith, I came down from heaven " ? And 



60 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 

when He said again, in the synagogue at 
Capernaum, " This is that bread which came 
down from heaven : he that eateth of this 
bread shall live forever," many of His disci- 
ples murmured and said, '^ This is an hard 
saying ; who can hear it ? " They would 
fain have something to rest their faith upon 
beside the divine character revealed in the 
life and the teaching of Jesus ; and " from 
that time," we read, " many of His disciples 
went back and walked no more with Him." 
Alas that men should turn away from the 
truth as it is in Jesus, revealed not by signs 
and wonders to the eye of sense, but revealed 
to the spirit, the heart and the conscience 
witnessing to the eternal goodness and right- 
eousness of God in Him ! 

It is the demonstration of these in spirit 
that we need ; and to this the study of Scrip- 
ture invites us. We should not fear that 
this study may be too searching, — that the 
kernel of truth shall be less precious when 
the husk is removed. We need not fear that 
the Son of God, the author and finisher of 
our faith, shall be taken away. We shall 
come to know Him and see Him all the more 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 61 

truly in spirit when we rightly interpret and 
esteem at their proper worth the traditions 
and narratives in which the Word has been 
clothed. An honest and reverent criticism 
will serve only to release the spirit from the 
bondage to the letter in which it has long 
been held through the ignorance and blind- 
ness of men. Paul saw very plainly that the 
letter of the Hebrew Scriptures, by the popu- 
lar idolatry of it, was killing the faith of his 
people in the God of their fathers, and blind- 
ing their eyes to the revelation of Him in 
Christ. How strange it is, and yet how sad, 
to see among Christians themselves in this the 
nineteenth century of the Christian era, the 
same idolatry of the letter of Scripture which 
Paul condemned ; yea, and the same blinding, 
paralyzing, killing effect of it upon a true 
religious faith. 

I know very well that there are good men 
and good women who are afraid of this new 
way of reading and learning the Scriptures. 
It is hard to surrender the traditions so long 
connected with their faith. They fear lest 
faith itself shall vanish with them. But, ah ! 
dear friend, is not this fear the sign of a want 



62 THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 

of faith in the God of truth, — of a doubting 
heart in the promise of Jesus that the Spirit 
of truth should come to His disciples ? You 
have heard the story of the Magdalene weep- 
ing at the tomb of Jesus. ^^They have taken 
away my Lord," she said, " and I know not 
where they have laid Him." They were the 
words of a weak faith. She was mourning 
the loss of the dead body of Jesus, and she 
knew not of the living spirit which was near 
her until the eye of faith was opened to 
behold Him. And then in the cry of glad 
recognition which follows, she owns to a Pres- 
ence that shall never be taken from her. 
And so the time is coming when Christ the 
Spirit shall be revealed to His Church with 
a power of blessing as yet unknown. The 
promise of His coming shall be fulfilled in the 
hearts of His true disciples. The tomb will 
be emptied of the body of flesh ; but they 
who love Him will not linger there in the 
vain hope of preserving it, with the painful 
memories of His departure. For they shall 
see Him as He is, at the right hand of the 
Father. Nay, they shall see Him as He is, 
in their very midst, breathing His peace upon 



THE SCRIPTURES FOR OUR LEARNING. 63 

them, inspiring them to deeds of love and 
words of cheer and hope, — the hfe and glory 
of a redeemed and regenerated humanity, — 
the living God, still dwelling on earth among 
men. 



III. 
Srtje JEirror of (Soli. 



III. 

THE MIEEOE OF GOD.i 

" For if any he a hearer of the word and not a doer, he 
is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass ; 
for he heholdeth himself and goeth his way, and 
straightway forgetteth ivhat manner of man he 
was:' — St. James i. 23, 24. 

HE Word is here likened to a 
mirror in which may be seen 
the mind of God for the soul 
of man. There is an art which 
" holds the mirror up to nature." 
"We see on the stage the reflection of human 
life as it is. It is sometimes called the school 
of morals, — not because its teaching is always 
morale in the better sense of the word ; for 
the pleasure which it seeks to give is not 
wholly unmixed with an element confessedly 
demoralizing. It could not keep its place in 
the popular favor if it were not in the main 
a truthful picture of human society as it ex- 
ists, with its conflicting play of interest and 

1 Staten Island, 1883. 




68 THE MIRROR OF GOD. 

passion^ in which good and evil are not 
always so distinguished as to make the one 
attractive and the other repulsive. It has 
been said that the purpose of art is never 
directly a moral one, though the moral char- 
acter of the artist may be always detected in 
his work. His proper aim is the representa- 
tion of what is real in nature. He must not 
be false to this, whatever he may attempt in 
the realm of the ideal. I^he stage is the 
school of morals in that it reflects faithfully 
the manners of men, their w^ay of speaking, 
acting, living, their loves and their hates, their 
vices and their virtues. It tells us truly of the 
world as it is, not as it ought to be. A play 
that revealed a moral purpose in the mind 
of the writer altogether beyond the range of 
actual experience could not keep its place 
on the stage. It would fail to please the 
mass of those who behold it ; their imagina- 
tion having been formed with material of 
quite another sort. Its characters would be 
criticised as impossible. Writers of plays 
will therefore, for the most part, keep to 
the moral level of the people who most fre- 
quent the stage. If society generally is per- 



THE MIRROR OF GOD. 



vaded by a tone of morals higher at one time 
than at another, that will also appear in the 
acting that is demanded. Nor will the relig- 
ious element be wholly wanting that shall 
fairly represent the prevailing type of the 
religious life. One may easily gather from 
the plays of Shakspeare the religious beliefs 
of his time, though it was his aim not to 
teach religion directly, but to represent, as 
he did with consummate art, human nature 
and human society as they appeared in his- 
tory and in the actual life of his time. 

And herein the art of y^^hich I have been 
speaking is distinguished from the word of 
religion. In the culture of our humanity 
something more must needs be done than to 
'' hold the mirror up to nature.'' There is 
need that men should see themselves not 
alone as they are and as they have been, but 
as of right they ought to be, and as by God's 
help they may hope to be. There is an ideal 
in the mind of God for the life of man, which 
He has ever been revealing by the ministry 
of His Word. This Word is also likened by 
the Apostle to a mirror, in which we are in- 
vited to behold the image after which human 



70 THE MIRROR OF GOD. 

character may be fashioned and human so- 
ciety may be formed. It is the reflection 
of the Divine that may reappear in the sons 
of God. It is the vision of a kingdom that 
shall come^ and shall gather within itself the 
kingdoms and peoples of the earth. 

The office of religion is to turn the eye of 
faith to the word of the living God, incarnate 
in the sons of men. If it speak to us of a 
moral blemish that mars the likeness to the 
divine, it is to make that evil repulsive in 
our eyes. If it tell of a beauty above us that 
hath not entered into the natural heart of 
man, it is to make the vision a lovely one, 
lifting the soul toward it in longing and aspi- 
ration. If it tell beside of a world redeemed 
from the curse of sin, of the scattered tribes 
of earth united in a common brotherhood, 
of the triumphant reign of righteousness and 
peace among the sons of men, it is to inspire 
the soul with confidence that this the word 
of God shall be fulfilled. 

I know there is a ready answer to this 
word from above. It is voiced in the wisdom 
of the world that speaks to us from beneath : 
" It is with the actual that we are dealing in 



THE MIRROR OF GOD. 71 

the visible, material world in which we have 
our being to-day, — the world as it is, the 
world as it always has been ; wherein the 
struggle for power on the one side, and for 
safety and life on the other, has been un- 
ceasing ; in w^hich the strongest shall win 
because it is the fittest to live." 

There is much in the science, as also in the 
art, of our day which ministers to this mate- 
rializing conception of human life. Ours is 
an age of discovery in the visible world, — of 
invention in the useful arts, of increasing 
dominion over the forces of nature, of mate- 
rial wealth accumulating and concentrating 
with a rapidity and a power for good or evil 
unknown to the world before. As the knowl- 
edge of men increases in this direction, so 
their energies are applied and their thoughts 
are formed. The education that is best for 
our children and youth must give the knowl- 
edge most available for immediate use. Cul- 
ture is subordinated to profit, character to 
success, in the strife to be foremost. 

That was a beautiful sentiment which came 
to us from over the sea, out of the heart of a 
sister nation, that a time-honored friendship 



72 THE MIRROR OF GOD. 

might be cemented, and the two repubhcs 
lift aloft together the symbol of their united 
faith, to illumine, as by the torch of liberty, 
the struggling nations and peoples through- 
out the earth. The* sentiment is met by a 
tardy response in the hearts of those whose 
boast it is that we are a practical people, car- 
ing little for a show that is without its end 
of use. But traditions held sacred by our 
sires may be worth preserving. If the love 
of freedom shall not cease to be a virtue, 
then will their descendants cherish the mem- 
ory of the nation's benef^xctors. It is an evil 
omen of the future when in the midst of so 
many proofs of material greatness the tokens 
of a spiritual life are declining in the nation. 
The love of liberty and the love of country 
were the spiritual forces which moved in the 
hearts of the American people, and gave 
birth to the republic. It is a part of the 
nation's religion sacredly to cherish these con- 
ditions of its inner life. To them she owes 
her safety more than to superior wealth and 
numbers, amid the perils which so lately men- 
aced her existence, — perils w^hich are certain 
to arise again if the lust of power and pride 



THE MIRROR OF GOD. 73 

of material life shall establish their dominion 
in the hearts of the people. 

" The mechanical engineer," said a distin- 
guished civilian/ the other day, " has his hand 
on the throttle of the universe." The brains 
and the muscles, instructed by science and 
trained by art, are henceforth to rule the 
land ; the powers which build its bridges and 
its railroads and its factories, with the genius 
which masters and directs them, are to be 
supreme. And the education which fails to 
make this end first, is useless. Schools and 
colleges and universities must exist for this. 
Laws must be shaped and legislators con- 
trolled by this. In a country like ours, with 
a development of material interests so rapid 
and so enormous, with possibilities so vast for 
the future, this theory of life is a natural and 
a plausible one. But it has this one fatal 
defect. It presumes upon the unity and con- 
tinued harmony of these material interests, — 
the brains and the muscles always working 
together in due relation and subordination. 
It takes no account of the spiritual forces 
whicli are always potent both for good and 

1 Governor Butler of Massachusetts. 



74 THE MIRROR OF GOB. 

evil in the hearts of men, — of human greed 
and selfishness, of the conflicting interests 
and passions of men, of vices which need 
to be corrected by their opposing virtues. 
It ignores the existence of certain elements 
of strife, which are already seething and bub- 
bhng beneath the surface of our national life, 
and the necessity of that higher education 
by w^hich alone the outbreak of these ele- 
ments can be restrained. 

There are powers more subtle than those 
of the material world. In the nature of man, 
beside the body which comes into immediate 
contact with matter, beside the brains by 
which he gains a knowledge of the properties 
and uses of things material, there are desires 
and tastes, emotions and affections, which 
make up by far the greater part of human 
life, and upon the right direction of which its 
welfare and happiness depend. 

Here we find the province of religion. 
Embracing the entire nature of man, it de- 
mands an education which has no lower aim 
than the free and harmonious development 
of all its faculties. It would teach him of his 
relation to the unseen Power upon which all 



THE MIRROR OF GOD. 75 

existence depends, his relation to an inner 
world of spiritual thought and reality, his 
relation to his fellows and to society. The 
study, then, which becomes to him the chief 
of all, is the study of man himself in these 
relations. The inquiry more urgent than the 
rest is how this human life can be made 
complete. For when the fitting answer can 
be made to this, he has discovered the secret 
of the universe. The revelation comes to 
him of the divine purpose of his existence, — 
why and for what he is here. It is the word 
of the living God for the knowledge of His 
child. 

Surely it is with these underlying truths 
that we are most concerned. Nay, the knowl- 
edge most truly practical and of the highest 
use among men is that which leads to the 
culture of their moral and spiritual nature ; 
for upon this depends the order and stability 
of society itself. Of what avail the enormous 
increase of wealth in the land, if we know 
not the right use to make of it, — if it min- 
ister to the indolence and pamper the pride 
of generations to come ? For the protection 
of property and its peaceful and rational en- 



76 THE MIRROR OF GOD. 

joyment, laws that are wise and government 
that is just are demanded. And how can 
these be secured except the fountain in which 
they arise — the popular heart and the popu- 
lar will — be kept pure ? The stream cannot 
rise above its source. Our boast is of a gov- 
ernment for the people and by the people, — 
an empty boast, except the people as indi- 
viduals have learned the secret of wisely 
governing themselves. 

In speaking of the office of religion in the 
education of men, I do not use the word in 
the limited and technical sense of the teaching 
of creeds, and conformity to the ordinances 
of worship through the office of ecclesiastics ; 
but in the larger meaning which includes the 
entire direction of human life toward the 
highest ideal made known to man. He who 
is reaching forward to this, for himself and 
for his kind, is, in the truest sense of the 
word, a religious man ; for he is working up 
to a divine standard of right living. He is 
true to the best word of God that is revealed 
to his mind. He hears that word in the 
voices of wisdom that speak to him variously, 
in the history of nations, in the precepts 



THE MIRROR OF GOD. 77 

of virtue, in the lives of good men, in the 
lessons of experience, in the monitions of 
conscience. And most of all, if the revelation 
of Christ be his, he hears it and heeds it in 
the life divine portrayed in the gospel of the 
Son of God ; for there he finds, more than 
elsewhere, what manner of man he ought to 
be, — how he shall rule himself, — how he shall 
use the good things of earth as not abusing 
them, — how share them with others, and in 
so sharing find the highest use and enjoy- 
ment for himself, — how enter with ready 
sympathy into the wants and sorrows, the 
hopes and endeavors, of his fellow-men. And 
in all the opening lines of action that Word 
is ever a lamp to his feet, and a guide to his 
path,- — plainly indicating the way of right 
that he should follow, clearly reflecting the 
image of God to v/hich he may be conformed. 
Alas that men should turn aside from this 
path, and suffer this divine image to be ob- 
scured, ' — hearers of the Word, and not doers 
also ; forgetting what manner of men they 
are in Christ ! The tendency — or rather, I 
should say, the temptation— in the world is to 
seek the end which commends itself to the 



78 THE MIRROR OF GOD. 

desires of our lower nature ; to content one's 
self with a dwarfed and sickly development 
of the life that comes from God. Hence the 
ignoble motives by w^hich men are ruled ; 
hence the imperfect training and education 
of the young. How to make a living for the 
body, — how to get wealth, social position, suc- 
cess before the world, — these are the problems 
of life to be solved ; these the aims which too 
largely determine the character of men. 

Let us hope that in the nation and in the 
world the Word of God is inviting to a truer 
life ; that the moral sense may come to domi- 
nate the carnal ; that the knowledge of the 
things we see may become the basis only of 
that better culture of the mind and heart 
of man by which all noble sentiments and all 
good affections are cherished. By the con- 
scious presence of these within, by the readi- 
ness always to give the proof of them in 
action, by the character in which w^e are 
known among men, may the Divine Spirit 
bear witness with our spirit that we are the 
children of God ! So shall we be doers of the 
Word, and not hearers only, deceiving our 
own selves. 



IV. 



t^i)t f rintipaJ ®^t)ing. 




IV. 

THE PEINCIPAL THING.i 

" Wisdom is the principal thing ^ — Pkov. iv. 7. 

FEW nights ago, a number of 
men, representing very fairly 
the culture and intelligence of 
the American people, were met 
together to do honor to one 
who had gained for himself a world-wide 
reputation as a philosopher. In responding 
to the words of welcome which greeted him, 
he took occasion to speak with a kindly in- 
terest of the future of the people whose hos- 
pitalities he had enjoyed, and to counsel them 
concerning the means by which their high- 
est welfare might be sought. The danger, 
he thought, which they had need to guard 
against, was the want of a proper ideal of life. 
This ideal, he said, is variable, and depends on 

1 Staten Island, 1882. 



82 THE PRINCIPAL THING. 

social conditions. " To be a successful war- 
rior/' was the highest aim in life among all 
ancient peoples of note. With them fighting 
was the principal business, while industry was 
fit only for slaves, or people of low degree. 
" We have changed all that/' he continued, 
"in modern civilized societies, especially in 
England, and still more in America. With 
the decline of militant activity and the growth 
of industrial activity, the occupations once dis- 
graceful have become honorable. The duty 
to work has taken the place of the duty to 
fight. Practically, business has been substi- 
tuted for war, as the purpose of existence." 
Successful industry is now with us, Mr. Spen- 
cer thought, the principal thing in human 
life. 

The evil effects of this ideal were already 
aj)parent. Everywhere he had been struck 
with the number of faces that told in strong 
lines of the burdens that had to be borne, and 
with the large proportion of gray-haired men. 
He had been told that men turned gray with 
us ten years earlier than in England. In 
every circle he had met men who had suffered 
from nervous collapse, due to stress of busi- 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 83 

ness. " I do but eclio," he said, " the opinion 
of all observant persons I have spoken to, 
that immense injury is being done by this 
high-pressure life, — the physique is being 
undermined." 

It will hardly be denied that Mr. Spencer 
has stated his facts correctly. Intemperance 
in work, excessive devotion to business for 
the sake of its gains, are unquestionably er- 
rors which threaten serious results of evil, 
especially to the Anglo-American part of our 
population. We shall do well to heed these 
further words of wisdom which fell from the 
lips of one who, perhaps above all living Eng- 
lishmen, deserves the name of "Philosopher." 

We are naturally interested in knowing 
what IS the ''" principal thing " in the mind of 
such a man ; how far it may accord with the 
teaching of other wise men, and whether it 
contravenes the wisdom of a Christian phi- 
losophy. There is a sentence in Mr. Spencer's 
address which seems to convej^ a criticism of a 
saying of St. Paul, that has done not a little 
to shape the current ideas of Christian people. 
After quoting " that subtle thinker and poet," 
Mr. Emerson, that the first requisite of a gen- 



84 THE PRINCIPAL THING. 

tleman is that " lie should be a good animal/' 
he adds^ "the requisite is a general one, — it 
extends to the man, to the father, to the citi- 
zen." He then says : " We hear a great deal 
about the ^ vile body \ ' and many are encour- 
aged by the phrase to transgress the laws of 
health. But Nature quietly suppresses those 
who treat thus disrespectfully one of her 
highest products, and leaves the world to be 
peopled by the descendants of those who are 
not so foolish." It does not seem wise to 
Mr. Spencer to speak of the " animal part " of 
man as vile, or to treat it as if it were vile. 
And he reprobates the conduct of those Chris- 
tians who have done this by violating a law 
of nature, in a disregard of the health of 
the body. 

If the words of Mr. Spencer must be under- 
stood to make the perfecting of our animal life 
"the principal thing," subordinating to this 
the culture of the intellect and the growth 
of our moral and spiritual nature, then very 
clearly he proposes an ideal of human life 
that is not in agreement with Scripture. But 
this is not his meaning. The ideal of human 
life with him, — to be gathered from his words 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 85 

as interpreted in the light of some of his other 
teachings — is the healthy and harmonious 
development of all its powers and capabilities. 
In his address he lays the stress upon the 
physical or animal, because it affords the basis 
upon which the whole superstructure of hu- 
man life is built. Health of body is needful 
to the grow^th and activity of intellect, and the 
proper exercise, in the long run, of moral and 
spiritual affections. With physical degeneracy 
there will also follow moral and mental de- 
terioration. It is of prime importance, there- 
fore, that \h^ laws of our physical nature 
should not be violated, — that men should be 
careful of their health, refraining from those 
excesses which undermine it. 

Now this is also the teaching of Scripture. 
The primary meaning of life is bodily exist- 
ence : a sacredness attaches to this as the gift 
of God \ the severest penalties are imposed 
upon the criminal viohition of it. The vices 
which injure it, in the offender himself or 
others, are condemned \ the virtues which 
preserve it — temperance, moderation, sobri- 
ety, sympathy w^ith suffering, kindness in 
relieving it — are commended. One of the 



86 THE PRINCIPAL THING. 

principal works of Jesus is bodily healing. 
The primary meaning of the Scripture word 
'' salvation " is restoration to health. 

When St. Paul speaks of this '^ vile body," 
— or, as it should be read, " the body of hu- 
miliation," — his words are to be interpreted 
in the light of these other teachings of Scrip- 
ture j for we must deal as fairly with Paul as 
with Spencer. It is not the body itself which 
is vile, but the vile passions which pollute it. 
The body itself is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost. It is presented unto God a living sac- 
rifice when its passions are curbed, and its 
lusts restrained, and its powers consecrated to 
the cause of righteousness. Paul contrasts 
with the body of humiliation the body glori- 
fied by the process of self-surrender to the 
will of God, which, beginning with obedience 
to the laws of nature, involves the denial of 
our lower self after the law of the spiritual 
life, and ends with the perfecting of that life 
in the heavens. 

For the sake of doing good to others, Paul, 
like his Master before him, subjected himself 
to discomfort and pain and bodily suffering, 
by which, no doubt, his health was at times 



THE PRINCIPAL THING, 87 

impaired. And Mr. Spencer^ in philosophical 
language, speaks of certain altruistic affections, 
— which is only another way of describing the 
love of doing good to others, that involves of 
necessity the sacrifice of personal gain and ease 
and comfort, sometimes of health and of life 
itself. He himself is an illustration of this 
higher law of our nature, having suffered not 
a little, and perhaps shortened his days, in a 
noble devotion to the pursuits of a philosophy 
which has an end of good in the health and 
happiness of mankind. 

His words, no doubt, convey a censure of 
erroneous notions in the Christian Church, — 
more prevalent in former days than now, — 
concerning the crucifixion of the flesh, by the 
voluntary infliction of pains and discomforts 
having no reference to the good of others, but 
with an end solely in some supposed advan- 
tage to the soul of the individual himself. 
These notions have derived support chiefly 
from words of Scripture, whose true meaning 
and spirit have been quite misconceived. The 
sufferings of Jesus, and the fellowship of His 
first disciples in the like suffering, as the 
means of spiritual life, have been contem- 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 



plated often apart from the times in which 
they occurred, and the causes which made 
them necessary and inevitable. The feeling 
is a morbid one which connects these suffer- 
ings only with benefits to be shared by the 
individual in another world, and hides from 
our view the loving purpose of them all in 
the health and comfort and happiness of the 
children of men in this present life. We are 
not created for suffering. Life is not a gift 
of God to be thrown away, much less to be 
lamented, and endured only in the hope of 
future blessedness. It is a good thing, to be 
thankful for, to be enjoyed, to be cared for 
and perfected by all the means which God 
has placed within our reach, — by the increase 
of knowledge, by the instincts of human 
sympathy, by deeds of loving-kindness. 

If then we look for the ideal of human life, 
where shall we find it ? Certainly not in the 
agonies of Gethsemane, nor in the lingering 
horrors of Calvary ; they were but the means 
to an end beyond. It was not the purpose of 
Jesus to perpetuate the pains which He en- 
dured Himself. Nor did He enjoin upon His 
disciples a voluntary and unnecessary martyr- 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 89 

dom. No doubt they believed, in many in- 
stances, that such a sacrifice would be pleasing 
to God ; but this was sheer fanaticism, sustained 
by those false notions of bodily life which the 
gospel of Christ could but slowly eradicate. 

It is true Paul gloried in his sufferings, as 
Peter rejoiced that he was counted worthy to 
suffer shame for the name of Christ. But 
these sufferings were encountered in the path 
of duty ; they were not sought for any merit 
that inhered in them ; they were the means 
to an end, of good to others. Jesus depre- 
cated the cross, in that memorable prayer of 
Gethsemane, " Father, if it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me. Nevertheless," he 
adds, " not my will, but thine be done." And 
here, I think, in the spirit which prompted 
these last words of Jesus, we see the essential 
principle of the life that we may call ideal. 
There is no courting of danger, no voluntary 
seeking of death, no undervaluing of the gift 
of God in the life of the body. On the con- 
trary, there is a natural shrinking from the 
pains of death, after the law of the bodily life 
that was His. But far above this was the 
display of another life of the spirit of God, 



90 THE PRINCIPAL THING. 

in which the law of duty and the law of love 
were dominant. 

And here, too, we may see what is "the 
principal thing" in the life of every human 
being. It is the development of what Mr. 
Spencer calls the altruistic affections, by 
which the instincts of our lower or animal 
nature, leading us to seek those pleasures 
which terminate in self, are subordinated to 
a law of our spiritual nature, by which we 
find a higher delight in seeking the truth and 
doing good for others no less than for self 
In other words, it is the subjecting of self-will 
to the will of God, and self-love to the love 
of God and our neighbor. The language of 
Scripture and the language of Mr. Spencer's 
philosophy differ very widely ; he does not use 
the words " God " and " spirit " and " love," 
but he does take note of the realities which 
these words represent. He is never impas- 
sioned like Paul, who rejoiced in tribulation; 
but he calmly recognizes the existence and 
the value of those affections which ennobled 
the Apostle, and contemplates the increase of 
them in the world, as the crowning glory of 
our humanity. He has nothing to say of the 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 91 

" coming of the kingdom of God; " but he sees 
in Nature and in history the unmistakable 
signs of a law of development gradually work- 
ing out the beneficent ends that are promised 
in the gospel of Christ. Surely the philosophy 
that lends a confirmation to our hope of the 
welfare and happiness of the human race is 
not " falsely so called." 

"We may not confound it, therefore, with 
that wisdom of the world which Paul described 
as the antithesis to the wisdom* of God. It 
was thought to be by many in his day, as 
it is now, a foolish thing to make anything 
else of life than the pleasure which comes 
from the satisfaction of our natural desires. 
The wisdom of the world, which he had most 
in mind, was selfish ; escaping pain by inflict- 
ing it upon others ; the enjoyment of beauty 
as it ministered chiefly to lust. It was earthly, 
sensual, devilish. St. James contrasts with 
this the wisdom from above, which is "first 
pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be 
in treated, full of mercy and good fruits." 
And St. Paul delights in speaking of the wis- 
dom of God in a mystery, that has its symbol 
in the cross of Christ. It appeared foolish 



92 THE PRINCIPAL THING, 

to the worldj that could see nothing divine 
in the love which endured it, and nothino- 
devilish in the hate that inflicted it. It 
was foolish to the world, that could look 
cahnly on while the best man in Athens was 
drinking the cup of hemlock. It is foolish 
now to the men of the world, who are heaping 
up riches for themselves, with an insolent 
contempt for the toiling multitudes whom 
they are robbing of their right to a lawful 
share in the fruits of their own industry. It 
is foolish now to those who selfishly shrink 
from the duties of vigilance and activity im- 
posed upon them that no harm may come to 
the Republic, — that justice and judgment and 
equity may be done throughout the land. 
These were the marks of wisdom in the days 
of Solomon. It is not the wisdom of those 
who are intent on getting as much out of this 
life, and the good things that are in it, for 
themselves, as they can, heedless of the wants 
and wishes, the pains and the woes, of their 
fellow mortals. The wisdom which is " the 
principal thing" is the life that seeks, for 
self and for all men together, the removal of 
the curse that has come into the world, and 



THE PRINCIPAL THING. 93 

the increase and enjoyment of the blessings 
and graces which the good God and Father is 
ever ready to pour out upon His children. 

This it is, — the ideal in the thought of 
every good man, more precious than rubies, 
more to be desired than gold, — " the princi- 
pal thing," most worthy of all seeking, both 
for the life that now is and that which is 
to come. It is not knowledge, nor culture ; 
these are but handmaids that wait upon their 
mistress. It is not work, nor health of body, 
nor pleasure, nor pain, nor gain, nor loss ; 
though it may combine them all, as needful 
to the grace and beauty and strength and fair 
proportion of that complete whole in human 
life which the Divine Spirit is evolving. 

" The fear of the Lord," we are told, " is 
the beginning of wisdom," for it is the spirit 
which reverently accepts the will of God 
under all the varying conditions of time. 
Wisdom is older than time itself; it was in 
the beginning with God, it has been working 
in the minds of men in all the ages since. 
There were wise men in the East leading 
men to Christ, and wise men in the West; 
the light from above radiating alike, yet with 



94 THE PRINCIPAL THING. 

a difference, in Greek and Roman and He- 
brew, yea, in the life of farthest Ind. There 
are wise men to-day, seeking the knowledge 
of all truth, — doing the work which their 
hands find to do, — doing it honestly, faith- 
fully, generously. 

There is wisdom, too, in the rightful enjoy- 
ment of life's pleasures, in the quest of that 
true beauty which shall redeem the world's 
art from the vulgarity, the sensuality, and 
the profanity which debase it. Let it not be 
imagined that the cross will cease to be the 
emblem of this wisdom ; for it is a wisdom 
indissolubly and forever wedded to love, — 
a love that seeketh not its own apart from 
the things of others, — a love of right that 
puts a curb upon the unruly will, — a love of 
God that accepts the sure decay of all that 
belongs to earth, in the unswerving faith that 
whatever He appoints is best, in the hope 
that through the grave and gate of death the 
soul shall come to the joys of its risen life 
in Him. 



V. 

ftje Cisiott of jTaitJ). 



V. 

THE VISION OF FAITH.i 

" Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day : and he 
saw it, and was gladJ^ — St. John viii. 5Q. 




HE interpretation that would 
make of these words of Jesus 
an assertion that His personal 
coming in the flesh was miracu- 
lously revealed to Abraham is 
scarcely worthy of notice.^ Hardly less for- 
eign to their meaning was the declaration 
of His personal pre-existence. How then 

1 Christmas, 1883. 

2 " It admits of doubt whether Jesns is speaking here of 
the temporal day of the Lord, — that, namely, of His coming 
in the flesh, — or of that day which knows neither rising nor 
setting. I doubt not, however, that our father Abraham knew 
the whole." — Augustine, Tr. xliii. 16. 

" Abraham saw the day of the Lord even then, when he 
entertained the three angels, — a figure of the Trinity." — 
Gregoky, Catena Aurea. 

In refreshing contrast with the foregoing are other words 
of Augustine, in commenting upon the text. 

7 



98 THE VISION OF FAITH. 

shall we interpret them ? The answer is 
simple enough. Abraham saw in spirit the 
kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed ; 
dimly indeed, and from afar, but unmistak- 
ably, by faith, he saw the rule of a righteous 
God on the earth. 

We read in the sacred story of a promise 
made to Abraham, that in him and his seed 
all the nations of the earth should be blessed. 
In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read how 
he interpreted this promise, and how those 
who were akin to him in faith beheld its ful- 
filment : " These all died in faith, not having 
received the promises, but having seen them 
afar off, and were persuaded of them, and em- 
braced them, and confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth." They 
too saw in spirit the day of Christ. It was 
the vision of faith, — God taking up His 
abode in the hearts of men and there abiding 
and ruling forever. It was the sight of the 
excellency and glory of His kingdom and the 
righteousness thereof above all that allures 
the ambition or engages the desire of mortals, 
the entrance into its blessedness in time, the 
pledge of its joys and its triumphs in eternity. 



THE VISION OF FAITH. 99 

The men to whom Jesus is reported to 
have been speaking did not have this faith, 
nor the vision of it ; and therefore in their 
bhndness they took the words of Jesus, as 
they did so often, in their literal sense. 
" Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast 
thou seen Abraham ?" If Abraham had seen 
him and his day, surely he must have seen 
Abraham. Jesus does not deign to explain. 
He saw that they were blind beyond hope ; 
boasting their descent from Abraham after 
the iievsh, but sharing not the faith of Abra- 
ham. They could not see, in the life and 
the works of Jesus, the reflection of the Divine 
glory which filled the longing heart of the 
father of the faithful. They could not see 
how it was that the Word of God, which 
was before Abraham, — His eternal truth and 
righteousness, — should embody itself in human 
life and society, simply because that Word 
was not in their hearts as it was in Abra- 
ham's, as it was in David's, as it shone out 
at last, for the lighting up of the world, in 
David's son. " There is sprung up a light 
for the righteous, and joyful gladness for 
such as are true-hearted." And when Jesus 



100 THE VISION OF FAITH. 

identifies His own life and teaching with that 
eternal Word in those other striking words, 
" Before Abraham was, I am/' they took np 
stones to kill Him. 

Jesus spake of Himself, at another time, as 
the Way, — that is, the way ^ of righteousness. 
This w^ay was before Abraham. It was God's 
way in the world ; and Abraham saw it, and 
was glad, for the God in whom he believed 
was a righteous God. Jesus also said that 
He w^as the Truth, — the truth concerning 
God ; what He is, and what He would have 
us to be. This truth was before Abraham, 
for God had been revealing it through the 
ages ; and Abraham saw it, obscured though 
it was amid the cruel idolatries of ChaldaBa, — 
he saw it and was glad. He went out from 
among his people, rejoicing in a God that was 
just and true and loving to the children of 
men. He went out, not knowing whither he 
went. Only he knew that this God was with 
him ; and the promise that cheered him was 
the vision, not of an earthly city with its 
pomp and glory and wealth and splendor, 

1 AiKaioavvT], with its kindred terms in Scripture, lias its 
radical meaning in the right way. 



THE VISION OF FAITH. 101 

but of a city that is an heavenly.-^ He saw 
God coming down from the heavens to rule 
and reign here on earth ; and the vision of 
the kingdom made him glad. 

Jesus said of Himself, again, that He was 
the Life. That life was the eternal life of 
God, communicated from God to man, and 
manifested in all that is Godlike in hu- 
manity. This life, too, was before Abraham ; 
and he saw it as it was, and is, and shall be, 
by faith. The anointing spirit of God was 
upon him. He looked and hoped and prayed 
that it might come upon his children, his 
family, his posterity, — upon the generations 
and the nations yet unborn ; and the spirit 
of prophecy was his, the pledge and promise 
of the Christ that was to be ; and he saw the 
day of Christ, and was glad. For the day of 
Christ is irrespective of time. It is in the 
mind of God ; it was there before time be- 
gan. It is in the heart of man, if indeed 
God as made known in Christ hath set up 
His kingdom there. 

And so it is that the words of Jesus in our 
text are brought home to us on this the day 

1 Heb. xi. 10. 



102 THE VISION OF FAITH. 

when the signs of gladness are all about us, — 
when the temple of the Lord has been beau- 
tified for His coming, — when songs of praise 
have echoed back to heaven the angelic wel- 
come to the King of kings. We too rejoice, 
as Abraham did, in the day of Christ \ we 
too have seen that day by faith, and are glad : 
but have we seen it as he did ? Let us pause 
a moment, and question our hearts of the 
reality of this vision of ours. 

We have seen the day of Christ as Abra- 
ham did not. We note the fact in history 
that Jesus was born, as on this day, in Beth- 
lehem, in the time when Herod was king in 
Judaea. The event itself has been commemo- 
rated ever since with all the outward signs 
of rejoicing. It is a day when Christians 
would fain be glad themselves, and make 
one another glad with kindly greetings and 
offerings of love. These are signs that we 
rejoice in the fact that Jesus came in that 
lowly birth, — the gift of God. And we are 
grateful for the gift ; telling us, as it does, 
how truly and tenderly God doth love His 
children. For here is a revelation richer and 
fuller than the one vouchsafed to Abraham. 



THE 'VISION OF FAITH. 103 

He believed in the Divine goodness ; but he 
had no such demonstration of that goodness 
as we have in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
He saw the lioht as it beamed out from the 
gates of the celestial city ; but he saw it from 
afar, and not as we w^ho, with the beloved 
Apostle, are blessed with the vision of it, in 
the Lamb that is the light thereof, — if so be 
that our eyes are open to understand the 
vision, and our hearts are made glad by the 
sight of the love of God in Christ. For what 
are all these outward rejoicings, unless they 
tell of a gladness within, which the w^ay of 
Christ and the truth of Christ and the life 
of Christ bring to us far more fully than 
they did to Abraham ? 

God forbid that I should say one word 
to-day that shall check the current of glad 
feeling which the day, with all its welcome 
festivities, brings with it. Yet I should not 
be true to the Master w^hose day it is, did I 
not seek to remind you of the place it should 
hold in your affections, and of the true and 
lasting source of gladness of which it tells us. 

The day of Christ is a day of peace \ 
and I think there can be no real gladness, 



104 THE VISION OF FAITH. 

certainly none such as Abraham knew, in the 
heart of any one who does not know some- 
thing of the peace of God, — a peace that 
arises from the consciousness that the message 
of divine grace which Jesus came into the 
world to bring has been accepted, that God is 
at peace with him, — a peace that flows from 
the assurance that he is reconciled to God, 
obedient to His will, submissive to His laws. 
One cannot be glad who knows that he is at 
war with God, a rebel against His wise and 
loving rule, heeding not the voice of God in 
his conscience, giving way to his lusts, the 
slave of his passions. It is only when he 
brings himself into harmony with the Divine 
will that he finds peace, — only when he 
ceases to murmur and repine under His provi- 
dences, that gladness comes into his heart. 
May God grant that this the day of Christ 
may be ours to see! 

The day of Christ tells also of good-will 
to man. And is there any spring of gladness 
so unfailing as that which wells up from a 
heart that has first emptied itself of all bitter- 
ness and wrath and spite and malice, and is 
then filled to overflowing with love and all 



THE VISION OF FAITH. 105 

its kindred graces ? I know men are glad 
often when their own selfish hopes and ambi- 
tions are gratified. They are glad even at 
the loss and suffering which come to others. 
But it is the gladness of demons, — the sweet- 
ness to the lips that turns to gall and Avorm- 
w^ood within. The gladness of Abraham was 
that of a generous, liberal, magnanimous 
spirit, itself supplied by a living faith in the 
Divine goodness, and flowing forth in streams 
of blessing to the world around him. This 
was the promise to the heart of faith, — a 
posterity reverent toward God, just and be- 
neficent to man, — a divine manhood on earth. 
The vision, joyous and hope-inspiring though 
it was, was still an imperfect one. It arose 
more brightly before the faith of the later 
prophet, who saw in spirit the coming of One 
who should be anointed with the oil of glad- 
ness above His fellows. Through Him the 
promise should be fulfilled. And this the day 
of Christ it is ours to see and be glad. 

The story is repeated in our ears, to-day, 
of the man, the Son of God, whose spirit is 
heaven-born, who came to do the works of 
God and speak the truth of God ; and this 



106 THE VISION OF FAITH. 

from first to last in lowliness and poverty and 
suffering unto death. The day of Christ has 
a depth of meaning which it is not easy to 
fathom. We are glad that Jesus did so much 
and endured so much for the love that He 
bore to the world. Is there something of the 
same love in our own hearts ? Then is our 
gladness of the kind which comes from a true 
beholding of the day of Christ. We have 
the sight of Him now as far removed in time 
after His coming in the flesh as Abraham was 
before Him. We are the children of Abra- 
ham, by faith; and, four thousand years apart^ 
the father and his children see together the 
day of Christ, — for there is no time in the 
kingdom of God. 

And yet there are representations of this 
kingdom in time and in the visible world. 
There is the individual life, limited by a few 
short years in duration. It is well to make 
the most of the time that God gives us here ; 
well to diffuse the light and warmth of our 
spiritual sun in the world around us, to make 
others glad and ourselves more glad by the 
loving spirit of Christ. 

And then in the Church of Christ — that we 



THE VISION OF FAITH. 107 

may see His day in that, and rejoice in the 
manifest presence of His spirit uniting its 
members in the bond of peace, animating 
them to deeds of charity, inspiring them to 
know more and more of His truth — how- 
much remains to be done ere the vision shall 
be fulfilled : when all that partakes of pride 
and vainglory and self-seeking shall be cast 
out, with that which is false and loveth and 
maketh a lie ; when the Lamb shall indeed 
be the light thereof, shining in the lives of 
the faithful, and the nations of them which 
are saved shall walk in that light. 

The time is coming. Abraham saw it from 
afar. The prophets of Israel looked out upon 
the promised glory of it. With clearer, 
brighter vision, as of its unveiled splendors, 
the beloved Apostle beheld it from his lonely 
prison in the -^gean Sea. And all who are 
numbered among the faithful, following the 
Lamb whithersoever He goeth, — all have 
seen it, and were glad. 



VI, 



trije ^tar in tf)e (Bast* 



VI. 

THE STAR IN THE EAST.^ 

^' And the Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to 
the brightness of Thy rising." — IsA. Ix. 3. 

" Now when Jesus was horn in Bethlehem of Judoea in 
the days of Herod the king, hehold, there came wise 
men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He 
that is horn King of the Jews ? for we have seen His 
star in the east, and are come to ivorship Him." — 
St. Matt. ii. 1, 2. 

T is a shallow interpretation of the 
Messianic prophecies to look for 
their fulfilment chiefly in the 
letter of the Evangelical narra- 
tive. The Catholic tradition has 
turned the magi of St. Matthew's story into 
kings, to make it the literal counterpart of 
Isaiah's prediction : " The Gentiles shall come 
to Thy light and kings to the brightness of 
Thy rising." The kings of Arabia and Saba, 
bringing their gifts from far, are the three 

1 Epiphany, 1878. 




112 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

kings of Orient, mounted upon the backs of 
camels and guided by a star. They are again 
identified with the Three Kings of Cologne, 
whose bodies repose in sanctity in the cathe- 
dral of that ancient city. 

But there is truth even in the legendary 
lore of the Church, enshrined in song and 
kindred works of art. We may find it there, 
even as in the inspired poetry of Scripture ; 
only we must search for it under the illumina- 
tion of the Divine Spirit. In the light of this 
we shall see how prophecy is fulfilled, not in 
isolated facts, but in the grand totality of 
events which we include in our conception 
of the coming of Christ's kingdom on earth. 

In the far-away East, the land of Cyrus and 
Darius, good men were seeking after God. 
They had long sought Him in the world of 
nature, but they had not found Him. There 
was mystery all about them. They were 
perplexed by the contradictions which they 
beheld between good and evil, life and death, 
light and darkness, joy and sorrow, hope and 
despair. There was power, but it was pitiless; 
for they saw not that it was 

" Wielded with a never-wearied love." 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 113 

The storm would boat as furiously upon the 
weak as upon the mighty ; the sun would shine 
as gladly upon the oppressor as upon the op- 
pressed. And the indifference of nature was 
reflected in the hearts of men ; amid the tears 
of the oppressed there was no comforter. 

And so the belief arose in deities, repre- 
senting the warring elements of nature and 
society, variously expressed in song and fable 
and worship; reducing itself, in some portions 
of the East, to the notion of two gods, ruling 
severally in the realms of darkness and of 
light, — the one the source of good, the other 
the author of evil. This belief did not satisfy 
the minds of the better and wiser men in 
those lands. It did not solve the enigmas 
of life. It did not lift the burden from the 
weary and heavy-laden. It did not offer to 
longing hearts a ground of hope, '^ both sure 
and steadfast.'^ It was not a faith that could 
nerve the arm in a conflict that seemed inter- 
minable. It did not light up the darkness 
that covered the earth, the gross darkness 
the people. 

Still the light glimmered in the hearts of 
those wise men. Whence did it come ? They 



114 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

had not found in the world about them the 
God whom they wanted, the Redeemer, the 
Saviour of men. They will look now to the 
heavens above. And, lo ! as they turn their 
gaze upward their eyes are greeted as by a 
vision of celestial light. The daystar of hope 
is discerned by the eye of faith. It is the 
w^ord of prophecy which captive Israel had 
sung of the Redeemer that should come from 
Zion. 

That the faith of Israel in the coming 
glories of the Messianic kingdom was pro- 
claimed, and to some extent communicated 
to the nations with which she had come in 
contact, is an historical fact sufficiently at- 
tested. It is impossible to believe that the 
truth which that faith conveyed concerning 
the Jehovah of Israel, with the cheering 
promise of His righteous and benignant rule 
on earth, and the hopes which they inspired 
among His people, should have found no 
lodgement in the hearts of good men beyond 
the borders of Israel. And this the cherished 
truth of Israel's God in the long years of her 
captivity, proclaimed by her prophets, and 
repeated by her dispersed sons among the 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 115 

nations of the East, was the star that ushered 
in the dawn of that fuller light which broke 
upon the world in the coming of the Saviour 
Christ. It beamed upon the longing hearts 
of the magi, the herald of the glad day to 
come. 

Thus, the legend continues, " the star which 
they saw in the east went before them till 
it came and stood over where the young 
child was." Obedient to tlie heavenly vision, 
they followed the celestial light till it led 
them to the truth of which they were in 
search. And when the star rested over the 
cradle of the infant Jesus, they rejoiced with 
exceeding great joy ; for they had found 
the long-sought treasure, more precious than 
the treasures of earth which they yield in 
tribute to the Divinity before them. Would 
we know the meaning of their worship ? It is 
the worship of the one true God, who reveals 
Himself in the human life of Jesus. It is the 
homage of all reverent hearts to the Divine 
Spirit now made known under the conditions 
of our frail and suffering humanity. It is the 
response of glad hearts to the good news of 
God, in the teachings of Jesus. Men of good- 



116 THE STAR IN THE EAST, 

will, both Jew and Gentile, shall hear and see 
in them the truth, or the life that now is and 
that which is to come ; " the light to lighten the 
Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel/' 
And so Christianity in its infancy, when 
the substance of its gospel truth was first 
apprehended, and before it was corrupted and 
mystified by vain traditions, was welcomed 
by wise and good men among the nations. 
This was the secret of its rapid conquest of 
the false and imperfect religions of the earth. 
It was a light above all other lights in the 
heavens above and the earth beneath. And 
when Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the 
light of the world, it was no exaggeration, 
no mere hyperbole for Oriental ears. Much 
less was it the assumption of a power that 
belongs only to Him who dwelleth in the 
light that is unapproachable. Whatever else 
of error she may have taught, the Christian 
Church has never dared to assert of her 
Head that He is the source of light itself. 
He is the " Light of Light," — " the true light 
which lighteth every man coming into the 
world." Jesus proclaimed this to be His 
to tell the truth of God to men. 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 117 

And have we not proof enough to-day that 
this is done by His gospel? ¥/hat fuller 
truth of God do we know than His? How 
can we come to the Father in any other way 
than we are taught to come by Him ? There 
is truth indeed in the faith of the Jew and of 
the Moslem. But the Jehovah of Israel and 
Allah of the Mohammedan are as stars in the 
sky of night to the mid-day sun that sheds 
its beams of light and warmth upon a long- 
benighted world. 

Let us not forget that this our Sun was 
heralded by a star. In the voices of Hebrew 
prophets, in the sacred oracles of the temple 
in Jerusalem, as no doubt by the word of truth 
that came in many ways and places besides, 
the star of Bethlehem was lighting up the 
night and leading wise men on to Christ. 
The interests of Christianity are not served 
by an ignorant or partial estimate of Gentile 
belief. The Word of God, incarnate in the 
life of Jesus, was not wholly unrevealed ; as 
to the Hebrew prophets, so also to the sages 
and seers in other nations of antiquity. The 
study of comparative religion, besides bring- 
ing to light a more hopeful and more encour- 



118 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

aging view of our humanity than has hitherto 
prevailed among Christians, will be found 
needful to the further propagation of the 
gospel itself. Our missionaries soon discover 
that there are many points of contact between 
Christianity and some of the older religious 
faiths in the East. They must own to the 
truth which they have in common, and then 
upon this common ground they may hope to 
impart of the more precious treasure of the 
revelation of God in Christ. 

There still prevails in the East the religion 
of the Parse es. It is many centuries older 
than Christianity. It was known to the Jew- 
ish prophets in the days of the Captivity, 
under Darius and Cyrus and Ahasuerus. The 
ministers of this religion were called magi, or 
wise men, as translated in our text. They 
were the instructors of kings and the deposi- 
taries of learning, both secular and religious, 
answering very nearly to the ecclesiastics of 
mediaBval Europe. 

The acknowledged founder of this religion 
was Zoroaster.^ Very little is known of his 

^ Vide "The Ten Great Eeligions," by James Freeman 
Clarke. 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 119 

personal history; but the teaching attributed 
to him is preserved in the Zend Avesta, — or 
the Persian Bible, as it may well be called. 
In one of these sacred books, " he is called 
the pure Zarathustra, good in thought and 
speech and deed. . . . He desires to bring 
knowledge to the pure in the power of 
Ormazd, the wise one, the source of all that 
is true and good and pure and holy. He 
prays for truth, and begs to know the best 
thing to do. He is said to have been op- 
pressed with the evil in the world, and espe- 
cially evil having its origin in a depraved heart 
and a will turned away from goodness. . . . 
His meditations," we are told, " led him to 
the conviction that all the woe of the world 
had its root in sin, and that the origin of sin 
was to be found in the demonic world." 
There were two spiritual powers struggling 
for the mastery of the human soul : Ormazd, 
the Prince of Light ; and Ahriman, the Prince 
of Darkness. This struggle would continue 
for many thousands of years, but would ter- 
minate in the ultimate overthrow of evil. All 
men who sought the life of truth and good- 
ness were incited to fight on the side of 



120 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

Ormazd. " In the far distance Zoroaster saw 
the triumph of good, but it could only come 
by pure thoughts going out into true words 
and resulting in right actions." For the war- 
fare was spiritual, and not carnal. 

The writings of the Avesta are chiefly de- 
votional. Along with much that is figurative 
and unintelligible to the ordinary reader, 
are passages like the following : — 

" I worship and adore the Creator of all things, 
full of Light. I invoke the holy one, the spirit of 
Justice, and spirit of Truth. I invoke thee, Fire, 
thou son of Ormazd. I invoke Mithra, the lofty, 
the immortal, the pure, the sun, the ruler, the 
quick horse, the eye of Ormazd. I praise the good 
men and women of the whole world of purity. I 
desire, by my prayer, the pure works of the holy 
spirit, a disposition to perform good actions, and 
pure gifts for both worlds, the bodily and spirituaL 
I have entrusted my soul to heaven, and I will 
teach what is pure so long as I can. Teach Thou 
me, Ahura Mazda, out of Thyself, from heaven, by 
Thy mouth, whereby the world first arose. All 
good do I accept at Thy command, God, and 
think, speak, and do it. I believe in the pure law ; 
by every good work seek I forgiveness for all sins. 
I keep pure the six powers, — thought, speech, work, 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 121 

memory, mind, and miderstanding. I^ enter on tlie 
shining way to Paradise ; may the fearful terror 
of hell not overcome me. May I step over the 
bridge Chinevat. May I attain Paradise with much 
perfume, and all enjoyments and all brightness." 

There are found also in these writings 
expressions of gratitude and thanksgiving to 
the Giver of all good, and along with these, 
the most heart-searching confession of sins 
of thought, word, and deed. Surely the faith 
of Zoroaster and the wise men who followed 
him was not far behind the faith of Israel in 
Jehovah, the Shining One, the God who loveth 
righteousness and hateth iniquity. The two 
faiths differ in the prominence given in the 
Persian to the power of the Evil One; making 
it equal, and sometimes superior to the power 
of good. The notices of the Evil One in the 
Old Testament are comparatively few. The 
serpent tempting Eve, and Satan afflicting 
Job, are the chief; and many biblical scholars 
doubt the reference of these to a person. 
There is a remarkable passage in Isaiah : 
" I form the light, and create darkness : I 
make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do 
all these things." These words are thought 



122 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

by some to be a protest against the Persian 
doctrine of Ahriman as the source of evil ; 
the knowledge of which was gained by the 
prophets during the Captivity. 

Though inferior to the pure monotheism of 
the Jewish faith, the worship of the magi 
is none the less spiritual. It is also entirely 
free from idolatry. The Parsees indeed are 
sometimes called fire-worshippers and sun- 
worshippers; but the fire and the sun were 
only symbols of the spiritual light and power 
of Ormazd. Very likely, in the minds of the 
more ignorant, the symbol often took the 
place of the deity symbolized ; but there is 
no trace of this perversion in their sacred 
books, and, if we may judge from the Scrip- 
tures of the Old Testament, the tendency to 
idolatry was much greater among the Jews 
than among the Persians. It is a remarkable 
fact that this tendency disappears in the 
Jewish history after the Captivity. 

In respect of its morality, the teaching of 
Zoroaster is not inferior to that of Moses. 
In both, the moral and the ceremonial law are 
blended, wath the result often of a confusion of 
moral and ritual obligation, — a result, indeed. 



THE STAR IN THE EAST 123 

not infrequent in the Christian Church. But, 
if possible, still greater stress is laid upon 
purity of life, in thought and word as well as 
in deed, in the writings of the Avesta than 
in those of the Old Testament ; while injunc- 
tions to holiness or consecration to God are 
hardly less emphatic. 

In its teaching of immortality and a future 
state, the advantage is clearly on the side of 
the Avesta. As you all know, there is com- 
paratively little of this in the Old Testament. 
The Sadducees denied that the doctrine was 
to be found at all in the books of Moses, and 
it was only by an inference that the Saviour 
met the appeal that was made to Him, — an 
inference possible only through the discern- 
ment of the spiritual meaning of Scripture. 
In the truer teaching of the Pharisees on this 
subject we have, it may be, additional evidence 
of contact with Eastern thought and Eastern 
belief. 

Still another point of similarity is found in 
the expectation common to both of a king- 
dom of God, and the coming of a Kedeemer 
to reign on the earth. But here the Jewish 
faith in the Messiah finds a bolder and clearer 



124 THE STAR IN THE EAST, 

utterance bj the mouth of its prophets than 
the magian doctrine of the Sosioch. There 
are no such words^ in the Avesta, of exulting 
confidence as those we have heard to-day 
from the prophet Isaiah. The Gentile heart 
was never stirred by hopes like those of the 
Psalmist in the future of Israel. True, these 
hopes were partly inspired by a sentiment 
of nationality intensely strong, and yielding 
to no vicissitudes of fortune. They were 
corrupted, too, among the people by religious 
bigotry and national pride. Nor in the minds 
of the prophets themselves was the concep- 
tion of the Messiah's kingdom wholly free 
from some of the grosser elements which 
entered into the faith of the first disciples 
of our Lord, and are still manifest in the 
Christian Church. But read in the light of 
the teachings of Jesus, we can see that the 
spirit was struggling within them to give 
utterance to the truer hope of Israel, that 
the nations of the earth should be blessed by 
the coming of the Prince of Peace. The son 
of David He should be, coming in the royal 
line of the kings of Judah ; but David himself 
had called Him Lord: how is He then his 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 125 

son? and how is He David's Lord except 
as He is the Son of God, the Christ, the 
Anointed One, ruhng invisibly in the hearts 
of men ; redeeming from the captivity of sin, 
and bondage to the fear of death ; speaking 
words of peace and hope to His people ; turn- 
ing men from darkness into light, and the 
power of Satan unto God ? 

This was the hope of the prophets and of 
the true Israel of God. Though it find its 
full expression nowhere else, it was not con- 
fined to the Jewish nation. The Redeemer 
of Israel was longed for and looked for be- 
yond the borders of Judsea. But if the higher 
revelation of the later prophets had come as 
it always does through affliction, Israel liad 
much to impart, as she had also much to 
receive by her captivity. The dispersion of 
her people was the propagation of her faith. 
The seekers after light among the wise men 
of the East should find it in the words of He- 
brew prophecy. The Gentiles should come 
indeed to her light : '' Lift up thine eyes 
round about, and see : all they gather them- 
selves together, they come to thee : thy sons 
shall come from far, and thy daughters shall 



126 THE STAR IN THE EAST 

be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, 
and flow together, and thine heart shall fear 
and be enlarged ; because the abundance of 
the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces 
of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." And 
then, as if the prophetic vision were extended 
beyond the possibilities of time, " The sun 
shall be no more thy light by day ; neither 
for brightness shall the moon give light unto 
thee : but the Lord shall be unto thee an ever- 
lasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun 
shall no more go dow^n ; neither shall thy 
moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be 
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy 
mourning shall be ended." 

The inspiration of words like these had its 
spring in the faith that the redemption of 
Israel should carry with it the redemption 
of the world. Her harp was not always 
hung upon the willows. The songs of Zion 
were lifted up in the land of her captivity. 
Their notes of joy had caught the ear of men 
whose hearts were stirred with kindred long- 
ings for deliverance from the power of evil 
in every form ; and we may well believe a 
kindred hope was awakened of a Redeemer 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 127 

mighty to save. It has been often said that 
a wide-spread belief in a coming Saviour pre- 
vailed about the time of the birth of Jesus ; 
and I interpret the story of the wise men's 
visit from the East as a tribute of all the 
Oriental beliefs to the grander faith of 
Israel in the coming of Christ and the es- 
tablishment of His kingdom throughout the 
world. 

That faith is our own, separated from all 
carnal conceptions of an outward dominion 
whose pomp and pageantry shall minister to 
an earthly pride, and centred in the reality 
of a righteous rule of God in the hearts and 
lives of men, — a faith that knows of no nation- 
ality, of no exclusive organism, of no limita- 
tions of sect or of dogma, but embraces the 
world of our humanity, and by the fellowship 
of God-fearing, right-living men, animated by 
the loving spirit of Christ, looks forward to 
the regeneration and salvation of our race. 

Such is the Christian faith. It includes, 
as you will have inferred, much that is good 
and true in other beliefs ; the rejection of all 
idolatry, common alike to the teaching of 
Moses and the magi; the pure morality of 



128 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

both, their doctrine of holiness made rational 
and spiritual by the abandonment of false 
beliefs in evil as inherent in matter and forms 
of bodily life. More clearly than either, it 
brings to light the truth of life and immor- 
tality. And then, fulfilling all other beliefs 
in a Messiah or Redeemer that should come, 
it is distinguished by the firm persuasion that 
the Christ, the Son of God, is a living reality, 
and that through the divine humanity which 
His name represents the kingdom of God 
will come, and His will be done on earth 
as it is in the heavens. Wise men look 
for light, and grope in darkness except 
they are led by the star of Bethlehem. 
The power of evil is strong in the world 
and in the hearts of men; and there is 
nothing stronger, but the power of divine 
love revealed in Christ. The magi knew 
not of this, as we do. The teaching of the 
Cross has little place in the writings of 
the Avesta. Good men fought against evil 
bravely, but not with the hope and joy of 
the Christian faith. They saw but dimly 
how it could be conquered by the suffering 
might of the righteous one. Rightly rejecting 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 129 

human sacrifice as devilish, rightly believing 
in a Divine goodness, the light that was in 
them was still feeble ; the day spring from 
on high had not yet visited them. They 
beheld not the heart of God in the Lamb 
that was slain from the beginning of the 
world. 

Surely it is this, the most precious of all 
the truths of our religion, which it may be 
ours to teach, both to the wise and the igno- 
rant throughout the world, if so be that the 
love of God in Christ shall stir within us, and 
the light from the Cross shall shine in our own 
hearts. When the true Light hath come, 
casting its bright beams upon the pathway 
of life, shall it be said of us that the darkness 
comprehendeth it not? 

There is a law of nature which bids every 
man seek his own; and there are those who 
recognize no higher law than this, yielding 
only on compulsion to the voice of God 
within, that bids them mind the things of 
others. There is no light from on high that 
shines in upon cold hearts like these. The 
sympathy of Jesus has not touched them. 
The glory of the morning star has not shone 



130 THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

around them. Christian art has delighted 
to represent the infant Jesus as lighting up 
the manger where He lies with a radiance 
of His own. And the world can be lighted 
up with the radiant spirit of Jesus, shining 
out in the lives of the faithful. What an 
added glory would be shed abroad if palace 
and cottage were alike illumined by it, — 
if the labor of men's hands and the activity 
of their minds, their wisdom, their knowledge, 
their culture, their genius, their wealth, and 
their power, could bring together the willing 
tribute of their homage to the divine man- 
hood of Christ, bending in lowly adoration 
before Him, and pouring out their treasures 
at His feet ! 



VII. 



Clje mfe of tlje spirit 



VIL 

THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.i 

^' Noiv all these things happened unto them for ensam- 
ples : and they are written for our admonition, upon 
whom the ends of the world are come^ — 1 Cor. x. 11. 




HE first thought which meets us 
in these words is the identity of 
spiritual life in all the ages of 
the world. To the mind of Paul 
this life was not one thing to the 
Jew and another to the Christian. The same 
things which happened unto the fathers are 
repeated in the experience of their children. 
They are ensamples or types, he says, of what 
is happening now; and they are written for 
our admonition, upon whom the ends of the 
world are come. We are distant in time from 
those events nearly four thousand years ; but 
the same lessons of faith and trust in God are 
as needful to-day as they were then. The 

1 1883. 



134 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

substance of the Divine will in regulating the 
life is unchanged. The recorded events in 
the Jewish history were unlike in seeming 
to the passing life of the followers of Christ ; 
but the same guiding and overruling Provi- 
dence, the same discipline and culture of the 
spiritual life, would ever appear to the dis- 
cerning eye of faith. 

It was the habit of Paul's mind to look be- 
neath the appearance of things visible to the 
spiritual truth which they conveyed. So he 
read the Scriptures, and interpreted the events 
which they recorded. He did not do violence 
to the letter of them, twisting their mean- 
ing into arbitrary or fanciful agreement with 
his own teaching, though he saw in them 
often more than the writers meant to convey. 
If the baptism unto Moses in the cloud and in 
the sea prefigured the Christian ordinance, 
and the manna and the water from the rock 
in the wilderness prefigured the sacrament of 
the Christian Supper, it was because in them 
all he saw the symbols of a divine protection 
and a divine sustenance ; in them all he dis- 
covered the tokens of a spiritual life, which it 
was the care and purpose of God to cherish. 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 135 

The events and ordinances of the olden time 
were types of good things to come. And if 
now a meaning richer and fuller were put 
npon them than had been known before, it 
was because in the revelation of Christ their 
meaning was more clearly seen. " They did 
all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all 
drink the same spiritual drink ; for they drank 
of that spiritual rock which followed them, 
and that rock was Christ." 

This interpretation of Scripture by Paul is 
sometimes called mystical^ because it carries 
with it a meaning wliich is hidden or mys- 
terious to the natural mind of the reader or 
hearer. But the meaning is quite intelligible 
to one who believes in God as a spirit, ever 
present, ever active in the world ; and is con- 
scious of a spiritual life coming from God 
and in communion with God. 

There is a way of reading the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures without this faith, in which 
the reality of a spiritual power and a spiritual 
life is entirely excluded, as the creation of a 
superstitious fancy. The record of historical 
facts is intelligible enough. The exodus out of 
Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the 



136 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

leadership of Moses, his code of morals and 
ordinances of worship, the more conspicuous 
facts of Israel's history, which are kindred to 
the well-known facts in the records of other 
nations, — all these will be read and credited 
without any difficulty ; but when the narra- 
tive deals with supernatural powers and in- 
fluences, when it tells of a Divine Being and 
a Divine Providence directing the events of 
that remarkable history, the revelation of a 
divine will and a divine purpose, then there 
is introduced an element of which the mind 
takes no cognizance. ¥/hen it speaks also 
of a faith in this Divine Being, and of a 
conscious spiritual communion, attested by 
feelings of trust and affection, by an in- 
ward disposition of will prompting to an 
outward obedience to divine law, here again 
is an experience altogether mysterious, which 
cannot enter into any rational account of 
things historical, though admitted as itself a 
fact in the history of mind. 

Obedience to human law, having its origin 
in human necessity; an outward civil and 
social morality, developed by prudential mo- 
tives, — are plain enough ; but when they 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 137 

are connected with belief in an invisible Spirit, 
then there is thought to be an assumption 
of reality which cannot be understood, — the 
language which employs it is mystical. 

And such to a great extent is the language 
of Scripture. Such were many of the words 
of Jesus and of Paul. Paul read the history of 
Israel in the spirit in which it was written, 
though with a faith illumined by the vision ot 
life and light from on high, which had come 
to him through Jesus Christ. In all the 
events of that history he heard the voice of 
God speaking, as it were, face to face with His 
people. The word of God was with them, 
revealing the path of duty as the way of 
health and safety. It was meat and drink 
to them in the wilderness, assuring them of 
the divine care and protection over them as 
the covenant people of God, — the word of 
promise and blessing on the one side, of 
duty and warning on the other; and that 
word was Christ. The cloud that guided and 
covered them, the sea that divided them from 
their enemies, the manna that fed them in 
the wilderness, the water out of the rock 
which quenched their thirst, — all told of 



138 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

spiritual verities, — of the word of the living 
God, entering into their spiritual life, guiding, 
feeding, nourishing them, — and all told of 
Christ. 

Now Paul would have us understand that 
the spiritual life of God's people, so cherished 
and developed in that olden time, was the 
same in its essential character as the Christian 
life of to-day, — the Christ-life then, it is the 
Christ-life now. And he would have us be- 
hold, in all the outward conditions of our 
natural life now, the same divine purpose of 
forming within us the Christ-life that he dis- 
cerned in the events of the Mosaic history, 
for the people of Israel. He is writing, no 
doubt, especially to Jewish Christians familiar 
with that history, that they might see how 
the things which happened to their fathers 
were ensamples for them. But none the less 
are they ensamples to us. All those lessons 
of wisdom are for our admonition and our 
instruction. We see the hand of God and the 
providence of God, the word or the wasdom 
of God, in all those recorded events, — how 
they were employed as the means of develop- 
ing the spiritual or Christ life of His people. 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 139 

To the same end, and by the like means, God 
is dealing with His people still. 

Nor does it diminish the value of this lesson 
to uSj that in the sacred narrative a miracu- 
lous element appears^ The conspicuous fact 
recorded is the reality of a divine presence 
and agency in those events ; and it is that 
reality which we are to discern, by faith, in 
the events of our own daily life. If the value 
of the lessons of divine wisdom in Scripture 
consists in the miracle, then it is w^orthless to 
us, for we see no miracle now ; none the less 
are we to believe in a divine providence at- 
tending us ; none the less are we to discern 
in nature the symbols of spiritual verities ; 
none the less should it be our faith that the 
gifts of God's bounty and the blessings of His 
providence are designed for the nurture and 
guidance of our spiritual life. Our belief is 
in the perpetual miracle of a supernatural 
power, sustaining, protecting, redeeming, sanc- 
tifying, — in the Christ, the Word of God, 
as really present to-day, and as truly impart- 
ing of Himself to us as to the people of God 
in the wilderness. 

This is the lesson that Paul would teach us. 



140 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

The external events of our life are greatly 
changed from theirs. There is no outward 
bondage to flee from, no Red Sea to cross, no 
fear of hunger and thirst to our bodies. The 
historian of to-day has a very different record 
to make from the one in the Bible. But the 
disparity ceases the moment we come to look 
at the spirit life which God is forming within 
us. The faith and trust in Him that may be 
ours, are the same. The spirit of obedience 
to His revealed will is the same, though the 
revelation of that will is fuller and freer to- 
day. In its essential character the Christ- 
life is the same to the Jew and the Gentile, 
the Greek and the barbarian, however the 
outward conditions of this life may vary. 

The truth for us to know and to live by 
is the revelation by the Spirit for all time, 
that God is over us and in us, and that we 
are to be animated by the unswerving faith 
in His presence and power. The life that 
we have is His, — body, soul, and spirit. We 
are protected as really by His providence as 
were the children of Israel in their passage 
through the Red Sea ; we are guided as truly 
as were they by the pillar of the cloud by 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 141 

day, and the pillar of fire by night. For if 
you will read their history with care you 
will find that the cloud Was understood as 
the symbol of a divine protection and guid- 
ance that was never withdrawn (so the 
spiritual-minded Jew will interpret its mean- 
ing to this day). We are fed by His bounty 
as truly as were they by the manna, which 
was to them as the bread that came down 
from heaven. 

And as all these outward gifts and blessings 
symbolized to the pious Jews the spiritual 
meat that was theirs through the word of 
God; as the rock from which the water 
flowed was the Christ which followed them, 
telling of the life of faith that God would 
cherish, — so in every providence and every 
earthly blessing we are to behold the signs 
and symbols of invisible realities, — the gifts 
of the Spirit, the pledge and the means of the 
Christ-life within. 

Of this life the Christian sacraments are 
meant to tell us. As the people of Israel 
were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and 
in the sea, — admitted, that is, into the Christ- 
life as made known through Him, introduced 



142 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

into the privileges and duties of the Mosaic 
covenant with God, — so we are baptized into 
Christ, admitted to the freer and fuller bless- 
ings which that name imports to us. The 
Sacrament tells us of God's care of His chil- 
dren \ of the protecting and saving grace which 
is theirs through faith. It is to us what the 
cloud was to Israel, — the sign of divine favor, 
the covering of our sins in forgiveness, the 
pledge of divine guidance in the night of 
temptation; even as in the night-time to Is- 
rael the cloud was turned into a pillar of 
fire. 

Then again, as the baptism of Israel in the 
sea told of an escape out of bondage, and 
of separation from their enemies, and thus 
became to them the figure of their escape 
and separation from spiritual foes, so the 
water of baptism symbolizes to us the flight 
from a spiritual Egypt, the renouncing of the 
devil and his works, with the covetous desires 
of the world, and the sinful desires of the 
flesh. Surely these things happened unto 
them for ensamples, and they are written for 
our admonition. We may well remind our- 
selves of the spiritual significance of those 



THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 143 

events to Israel, and of the parallel which the 
Apostle has presented in the blessings and 
obligations of the Christian Covenant. 

Nor is it an idle fancy of the Apostle, when 
he makes the feeding of Israel with manna in 
the wilderness, and the quenching of their 
thirst with water from the stricken rock, to 
tell of the spiritual meat and drink that were 
theirs, and of the spiritual food that is ours, 
also, through Christ. Would that all the good 
things of earth, that minister to the suste- 
nance of these mortal bodies, could become the 
signs to us of the grace and truth from on 
high, by which our spiritual life is nourished. 
So indeed they would be, if, like the Israel- 
ites of old, we did not forget the source from 
whence they came, — that all are from the 
hands of God, — that the daily bread which we 
eat is as truly the bread from heaven as the 
manna in the wilderness \ provided by a bounty 
as mysterious, as gracious, and as loving. If 
we thought of the Giver as we ought, with 
the filial gratitude which becomes us as the 
children of God, then would the use of the gift 
be ours, which He is sure to approve. Then 
would there be no lusting after evil things, as 



144 THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT. 

they lusted in the wilderness ; no sinful or 
selfish indulgence ; no idolatry of wealth and 
power and pleasure ; no tempting of God by 
our doubts of His goodness, our murmurings, 
our repinings, and our fears. Then would all 
the gifts and creatures of His bounty, like the 
bread and the wine in the Holy Supper, be- 
come the signs to us of the unspeakable grace 
and mercy made known to us in Christ. We 
should eat of that spiritual meat, and drink of 
that spiritual drink ; for the cup of blessing 
which we bless would be indeed the com- 
munion of the blood of Christ, and the bread 
which we break would be indeed the com- 
munion of the body of Christ. 



VIII. 

gr!)e IDigmtp of jFE^n. 



10 



YIII 

THE DIGNITY OE MAN.^ 

" What is ma7i, that Thou art mindful of him ? and 
the son of man, that Thou visitest him ? Thou madest 
him lotve?' than the angels, to crown him luith glory 
and worship. Thou makest him to have dominion of 
the works of Thy hands : and Thou hast put all 
things in subjection under his feet P — Ps. viii. 4-6. 

E can imagine the Psalmist stand- 
ing alone in the stillness of an 
Oriental night, lifting his eyes 
above in adoring wonder, and 
giving speech to the kindling 
spirit within, — "I will consider Thy heavens, 
even the works of Thy fingers, the moon 
and the stars, which Thou hast ordained." 
And then, as his mind turns from the vast 
spaces above, illumined with the splendid 
tokens of the majesty and glory of God, to 
the little spot of earth which confines himself, 

1 Advent, 1881. 




148 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

and the infinitesimal part which he bears to 
the All in all without him, we hear the ques- 
tioning that follows : " Y\^hat is man, that 
Thou art mindful of him? and the son of 
man, that Thou visitest him ? " 

It is the question ever recurring to thought- 
ful minds in hours of quiet meditation. It 
comes to us most when, away from the busy 
haunts of men, we are brought face to face 
with God in nature, — in the solitudes of lofty 
mountains or amid the wonders of the great 
deep ; most of all, as it did to the Psalmist, 
in our thought of the myriad worlds beside 
our own, and of the boundless space in which 
they move. What are we to the universe, of 
which we form a part ? What are we to the 
Being whence all has come, to the Power 
which upholds, to the Wisdom which directs? 
Is it ours to interpret the meaning of the 
universe ? Is it ours to find our true place 
within it, and our destiny bej^ond it ? 

The Psalmist's question is indeed a hum- 
bling one to human pride. We are but motes 
in the sunbeam, but atoms in the infinity of 
matter. Out of dust we have come, and unto 
dust shall we return. Our life is but a vapor ; 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN, 149 

" SO soon passeth it away, and we are gone." 
The imagery of nature is exhausted by the 
writers of Scripture in telling of the vanity 
of human life ; and neither its shortness nor 
its feebleness is exaggerated. The most help- 
less of all animals when brought into the 
world, man is the least guided by instinct, 
the most subject to pain. The afflicted Job 
cannot solve the mystery of his being: 
"What is man that Thou shouHst mag- 
nify him? that Thou shouldst visit him 
every morning, and try him every moment ? " 
How often have these words been echoed 
amid the sorrows and disappointments of 
human life ! We should err if we heard in 
them only the outcry of impatience, or be- 
held alone the chafing and fretting of the 
soul under wise and wholesome limitations. 
They are the attempt, beside, — not altogether 
vain, let us hope, — to inquire of the wisdom of 
God in the appointed order to which we are 
now made subject. 

The mind of the Psalmist does not dwell 
upon the brevity of individual life, nor does 
he wait in sad perplexity upon the vanity of 
its hopes and the weakness of its endeavors. 



150 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

He finds an answer to his questioning in the 
knowledge of human achievement, in the 
conscious possession of powers which estab- 
lish his lordship in creation, in the faith of 
his communion with God. The false philoso- 
phy and no less false theology that takes note 
only of life's failures, that exaggerates the 
story of its evils and looks only upon its 
moral deformities, has no place in his heart. 
" Thou makest him to have dominion of the 
works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things 
in subjection under his feet." Even in the 
limitations of his mortal existence, he beholds 
an end of blessing : " Thou madest him lower 
than the angels, to crown him with glory and 
worship." 

It is in this thought of the dignity of 
human life that the Psalmist strikes the key- 
note of his song of praise. If, to interpret 
truly the story of that life, his harp was 
I sometimes attuned to other notes than those 
of gladness, they are lost in the strains of 
exulting triumph in which he recounts the 
excellency of the Divine glory, — as in the 
heavens above, so also in the world beneath, 
over which man is made to have dominion. 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 151 

In following out this thought of the 
Psalmist, we have no need to underrate the 
more humiliating facts of human life. It is 
rather by contrasting them with those other 
facts which were the cause of his rejoicing 
that the full truth can be seen. Side by side 
with the mournful badges of mortality, the 
feebleness of the hand of man amid the 
mighty energies of nature, the brief duration 
of his individual existence, the failures and dis- 
asters so often witnessed in his short career, 
— side by side with these we place the rec- 
ord of successful endeavor : free-will battling 
valiantly against fate ; the proofs of an un- 
seen power of mind slowly but surely es- 
tablishing its sway over the brute forces 
of creation. And then, in the face of 
the saddest reminders of human depravity, 
we would point you to the illustrious ex- 
amples of virtue, to the triumphs of reason 
over passion, of wisdom over folly, with 
which history, both sacred and profane, is 
resplendent. 

And here we must bear in mind that it is 
the life of the individual only as connected 
with our corporate life upon which our esti- 



152 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

mate of its value must be based. It is not 
alone by the falling leaf that we form our 
thought of the life of the tree. It is not by 
the inmates of our prisons and almshouses that 
we judge of the life of the nation, nor yet 
alone by the vices and crimes of individuals 
that go unwhipped of justice. It is by the life 
embodied in its entire history that we accord 
its true place among the nations. We should 
be unjust to the French people if we judged 
them only by the excesses of bad men in the 
Revolution, or the follies which stigmatized 
the brief sway of the commune in their chief 
city. The glory of England must not be for- 
gotten in pointing to the proofs of her shame. 
The true idea of a nation is to be gathered 
from the entire history of its growth, from its 
existing institutions, from the promise they 
give of future development; and the true 
idea of our humanity is to be formed in like 
manner. Ignorances, lapses, and follies in- 
deed must be taken into the account; but 
along with them evidences of an increasing 
knowledge, of a wise profiting by experience, 
of vitality ever asserting its power of growth 
and of healing. Such we believe to be the 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 153 

complex history of the human race, giving 
indubitable proof of a life-giving Spirit from 
above, working in the lives of nations and of 
men. 

The lives of most men are uneventful. A 
few whom the world calls great come and 
act their part on the stage for a little while, 
and pass away. But the drama of human 
history never ceases. The curtain falls only 
to rise again upon new scenes and new actors. 
Many of the scenes are tragic. The same 
story of wrecked fortunes and hopes disap- 
pointed seems to be acted over and over 
again. History, we are told, is ever repeating 
itself; but to the close observer the move- 
ment is always onward. Each generation 
adds something to its heritage from the gen- 
erations gone by. The world is enjoying 
to-day the accumulated results of human 
thought and discovery in all the ages. " Life 
is short, but Art is long." Men have dis- 
coursed of the " lost arts ; " but none of the 
beneficent arts have been lost to the race. 
Phoenicia gave letters to Greece, and the 
lighted torch has been passed from hand to 
hand, to our own time. The great cities of 



154 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

the East have long since disappeared; for 
many centuries the tent of the barbarian has 
been pitched amid their ruins. But the scep- 
tre of their power was only transferred ; the 
world lost nothing by their overthrow. The 
colossal monuments of their art, ranged side 
by side with the statues of Western cities, 
tell plainly enough the story of progress. 
The pyramids of Egypt are still the wonder 
of the world, but feats of engineering no less 
remarkable and vastly more useful are com- 
mon to-day. The famous library of Alexan- 
dria w^as destroyed by an incendiary, but the 
knowledge stored away in its myriad tomes 
has been diffused throughout the world. 
Traces of the conquering pov/er of ancient 
Eome may still be seen throughout the 
whole of western Europe. The Roman arms 
carried with them the arts and manners of 
civilized life ; and when the tide of con- 
quest turned, the educating process did not 
cease. 

In the city of Paris there stands an ancient 
abbey, built upon the site of a Eoman palace, 
within whose walls a statue of the Emperor 
Julian has been unearthed, together with 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 155 

other relics of Roman art. The abbey is 
now a museum^ in which is exhibited a 
collection of rare and costly objects that 
have escaped the ravages of time, and rep- 
resent in a remarkable manner the art and 
culture of many centuries. The place is 
interesting for the proof it gives of the fact 
that amid all the intervening revolutions of 
time, with their scenes of violence and car- 
nagCj the mind of man has ever been busied 
with the arts of peace. The product of skill 
and inventive genius in the years gone by 
has not been lost, but increased by the con- 
tribution of every succeeding age. Poets 
and statesmen come and go \ but their work 
survives, to enrich the literature and shape 
the legislation of future generations. The 
story of the siege of Troy, embalmed in the 
verse of Homer, is repeated, when the ruins 
of the ancient city are buried deep beneath 
the earth. And the names of Minos and 
Solon and Lycurgus are familiar as house- 
hold words, when the nations in which they 
ruled have long ceased to exist. 

The like survival and the like increase 
are beheld in the heritage of religious truth. 



156 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

The sacred books of the Hebrews are bound 
up together with the records of the Chris- 
tian faithj though five-and-twenty centuries 
have passed away since the sun of Israel's 
glory began to decline. No useful lesson 
of experience, embodied in her history, no 
cherished treasure of inspired wisdom, has 
been lost. All have been incorporated into 
the religious thought of Christendom. Nor 
have other sources of piety and wisdom been 
wanting to enlarge the volume and enrich 
the possession of religious truth which we 
now enjoy. Justice and equity were familiar 
virtues among the early converts in Eome. 
The morals of Seneca and Aurelius include 
the ethical precepts of our religion ; even the 
law of Christian love and brotherhood was 
not altogether unknown to many who heard 
the word gladly from the lips of St. Paul. 
Christianity was planted in a soil which had 
been prepared for it by a kindly culture, 
though much that was foreign to its spirit 
was embedded also in the manners and 
thoughts of the people, and reappeared in 
their worship. But along with its supersti- 
tions, the Koman Church preserved its in- 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 157 

heritance of religious truth. For many ages 
it was the refuge of the oppressed and the 
friend of the poor, the patroness of art and 
the nursing mother of genius. The cathe- 
drals of Europe, the stately monuments of 
her power, bear witness also to the piety of 
her sons. They will stand when the errors 
that have corrupted her teaching and de- 
formed her worship shall have vanished for- 
ever, and the preaching of the pure word of 
God and the worship of His name in spirit 
and in truth shall alone be heard within 
their consecrated walls. What changes of 
belief and of practice have not these noble 
structures witnessed ! The stone steps worn 
away by the kneeling pilgrims to the shrine 
of St. Thomas a Becket are still visited at 
Canterbury. But how unlike the rule of 
that ancient prelate is the mild and gentle 
spirit of his successor, and how changed the 
thoughts of the multitudes who now join in 
the prayers and praises that there ascend to 
heaven 1 

Surely it is God. who has a care for His 
truth, and will not suffer the remembrance of 
His name to perish. The creature whom He 



158 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

has made in His own image, that He might 
crown him with glory and worship, though 
estranged by his own self-will and fallen 
from his high estate, is never beyond the re- 
deeming power of His love. By the manifold 
workings of His providence, by the teachings 
of His Spirit, to enlighten him in all that 
concerns his safety, his comfort, his health, 
and his happiness here. He is giving " him 
dominion of the works of His hands, and 
putting all things in subjection under his 
feet." 

The word "religion " has a certain technical 
sense, by which we are very apt to limit its 
true meaning. The faith which looks to God 
as the Giver of life must discern also the gift 
of His Spirit in all human activity toward an 
end of good. Thus we are to look upon the 
useful arts and sciences, by which the ills of 
life have been mitigated and its comforts 
and conveniences multiplied, as so many 
modes by which the Spirit of the living God 
is working in and through our humanity. 
And those arts also which refine our tastes 
and minister to innocent pleasure are none 
the less the channels of divine grace. Re- 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 159 

ligious belief and religions worship are best 
serving their end when, along with the les- 
sons of duty which they help to convey, and 
the hope of immortality which they cherish, 
they remind ns, beside, of the reality of God's 
presence and power, ever fulfilling His word 
in the world, ever leading by His providence, 
ever guiding by His Spirit. This is the lesson 
we gather from the history of the people of 
Israel. And the same lesson we may gather 
from all history. It is not to be read, as the 
record of wars and revolutions, the manoeu- 
vring of armies, and the overthrow of dynasties, 
without a thought of the meaning and pur- 
pose of these events, but for the relation 
which they all bear to the increase of knowl- 
edge and virtue, to the more just and equal 
distribution of the blessings of life. And 
when we come to read not only the Bible, 
but all books, in the faith that there is a 
Divine Spirit moving in the lives of men 
and acting in all the affairs of time, helping 
the race onward to the end of its high calling, 
inspiring men with a desire for all knowledge 
and all truth, then we shall read more intel- 
ligently, because we shall read more rever- 



160 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

end J. The spirit of understanding shall be 
ours to see and make use of the blessings 
which have come to us by the labors and 
sacrifices of others, the inventions and dis- 
coveries, the treasures of art and of science, 
the lessons of human experience, the teach- 
ings of divine wisdom, — our heritage from 
the past. 

And then, in the light of all this, we shall 
see what God will expect of us in this our 
own day and generation. There have been 
those whose lives have been spent in seem- 
ingly frustrating the Divine purpose of good 
to our race. They have been marplots in 
the great drama of human history. Forget- 
ting the ties of a common brotherhood and 
the gift of a common inheritance, they have 
abused the powers which God has given, for 
the ends of their own selfish pleasure and am- 
bition. They seem to have had their own 
way on earth at times, but only that the 
folly and stupidity of that way might be 
more clearly seen, and God's way might be 
known upon earth, His saving health among 
all nations. 

What He requires of us is simply that we 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 161 

should put ourselves in that way, and move 
on with the mighty tide of beneficence which 
His hand is directing. The Psalmist tells us 
of a glory and a worship with which it is the 
purpose of God to crown our humanity. The 
signs of that purpose are about us in the 
material world, over which man is rapidly 
gaining dominion. We read them in history. 
We see them in every invention by which 
labor is saved and the product of human in- 
dustry multiplied. We see them in the hon- 
est toil of the mechanic, in the enterprise of the 
tradesman, in the skill of the artisan, in all 
the activities of mind and of body by which 
human life is worthily maintained. This is 
what an ancient father meant when he 
said, "Laborare est orare," — ''To labor is 
to pray." To do one's work uprightly and 
unselfishly, in the hope of the blessing with 
which God will surely crown it, is indeed an 
act of worship which, while it honors God, 
is the surest way to dignify the life that 
comes from Him. 

It is when we have learned to apply our 
religious faith to our daily life that we shall 
most find the comfort of that reasonable and 
11 



162 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

religious hope which attends it. When we 
have put ourselves in the right way, we need 
not fear what the end may be. If God be 
for us, death itself cannot be against us. The 
Apostle tells of a kingdom and glory to 
which the Christian believer is called ; no 
doubt, with a meaning which includes the 
glory and worship of the Psalmist, but vastly 
more. We walk worthy of that kingdom 
and of the fellowship of Him whom we own 
to be our King, when we have ceased to live 
as if our interest and our fortunes here and 
our hopes and our destiny hereafter were de- 
tached from those of our fellows and of the 
race to which we belong. What we are, we 
owe to others, or rather to God, who has 
united us — as in blood, so also in the 
spirit and work of our lives — to those who 
have lived before us, the fruits of whose 
labor and the lessons of whose wisdom we 
now enjoy. How shall we repay the debt? 
How shall we walk worthy of the fathers who 
have wrought for our sake and have entered 
into their rest? Simply by carrying on their 
work in a manner that is worthy of our rela- 
tion to them. When we are doing that, then 



THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 163 

we may look forward in hope, for then we 
shall walk worthy of our high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus. Jesus represented our hu- 
manity; for that, and the glory of it, He 
lived and died. 

The parish church within whose grounds 
the poet Southey lies buried is one of the 
oldest churches in England. Not one of the 
worshippers of to-day can tell when or by 
whom it was built. There is no record of 
its origin ; even the tradition thereof is lost. 
But the worship for which it was built has 
survived, changed in form, but addressed to 
the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. In the spirit and purpose of that 
worship, the successive generations, we may 
well believe, have lived and died. The old 
church has been enlarged and renovated to 
meet the wants of increasing numbers, and it 
stands to-day the memorial and witness of the 
piety of those whose bones have long since 
crumbled into dust, and the pledge, let us 
hope, of a worship no less honoring to God 
in the generations to come. 

We have all entered into the labors of the 
saints who have gone before us. Shall it be 



164 THE DIGNITY OF MAN. 

ours also to enter into their rest ? " These 
all, having obtained a good report through 
faith, received not the promise : God having 
provided some better thing for us, that they 
without us should not be made perfect." 



IX. 




IX. 

THE TEUTH IK LOYE.^ 

" But speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into 
Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. ^^ — 
Eph. iv. 15. 

E notice in the writings of St. 
Paul the recurrence of certain 
favorite figures of speech^ ihus- 
trating the life of faith in the 
Christian Church. One of these 
is the temple, in which Christ is the corner- 
stone, the Apostles and Prophets resting upon 
Him, and all believers built up together with 
them on this foundation. Another is the 
figure of a living human body, in which Christ 
is the head, and His disciples the members. 
These figures represent at once the totality 
of Christian life in the Church, and the indi- 
vidual life of the believer. As in the Greek 
philosophy, the universe was the macrocosm, 

1 1878. 



168 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

or greater world, and man himself the micro- 
cosm, or little world, imaging the beauty and 
order and harmony of the grand whole ; so 
in the Christian philosophy of Paul, Christ 
was to be seen in the whole body, and in 
each member in particular. Each one is a 
temple of the Holy Ghost, to be built up in 
the knowledge and the love of God, and conse- 
crated for the habitation of God by the Spirit. 
Each one is to grow into Christ, which is the 
head, unto a perfect man, " unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 

And herein lies the distinguishing excel- 
lency of our religion. It is embodied, not 
in dogmas, nor yet in any system of moral 
precepts, but in a life, even the divine man- 
hood of Christ, — a life appearing in time and 
under the conditions of nature, but also a life 
spiritual and supernatural, and therefore sus- 
tained and propagated in the world by super- 
natural influences. 

Dogmas or creeds may tell of this life, 
but imperfectly. We go to the four Gos- 
pels, and not to our creeds, to know Christ 
and the power of His life. The moral pre- 
cepts of some other religions are hardly in- 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 169 

ferior to those of Christianity; but none has 
given us a life like that of Christ. None 
beside has told us of a divine grace and fel- 
lowship, imparting to us of the Divine Spirit 
and lifting our humanity up to God. The 
inspiring hope of the Christian is that he may 
grow up into Him in all things, which is the 
head, even Christ. 

He is in very deed a member of His body, 
holding the truth in love, and therefore 
speaking and acting that truth more and 
more, until the stature of manhood in Christ 
is reached. This, at least, was the faith of 
Paul. One whose aim is lower than this has 
not the same object to inspire him that Paul 
had. The Christ that he believed in, is 
not his. 

If the figures we have noticed fairly rep- 
resented a living reality in the heart of St. 
Paid, it must have appeared in a certain grace 
and symmetry of character, which none who 
knew him well could mistake for a growing 
likeness to the original enshrined within. 
The handiwork of an artist will always repre- 
sent the form which his soul has cherished ; 
and every stroke of the chisel or the pencil 



170 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

will tell of the effort to give shape to that 
form. His labor may be long and arduous. 
The beauty which he has conceived will not 
be disclosed without many an attempt and 
many a failure ; but he will not cease to 
woo it, for it is in his heart and he cannot 
rest until he has won it. 

The shaping of a human soul is the same. 
The form that one worships in his heart will 
appear in his life. If it be divine, then the 
Christ will be seen. If it be an idol, telling 
of lust or avarice or ambition, then it will 
shape itself in the deeds and in the character 
of the man. Even in these bodies of flesh 
and blood the features of the human face are 
made to give expression to the spirit within. 
More really than we think, is it possible to 
put on Christ ; so that in whatever mould the 
body may be cast, the form and likeness of 
the Son of Man may be revealed by the 
spirit. The character of Jesus will be sure 
to come out in His true disciples ; and while 
we are not to be chiefly concerned as to how 
we shall appear in the eyes of men, we are 
concerned that the moulding and fructifying 
power of divine grace shall not be hindered 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 171 

within us. We are to '^ grow up into Him in 
all things, which is the head, even Christ." 

Observe the Apostle's language. It is in 
all things that we are to grow up into Christ. 
For as in the human body the effect of a 
good figure is sometimes marred by an un- 
graceful carriage, so the gracious work of the 
spirit of Christ in the human soul may be 
defeated by the habitual- yielding of the will 
to impulses and tendencies to evil. There 
may be life ; but there are blemishes which 
deform it and hinder its growth. The soul 
has not acquired the manly bearing of Christ. 
It stoops, even in the formal service of the 
Master, to ways which He Himself would 
reprove. Easily provoked, its vanity is easily 
wounded. It thinketh evil and speaketh evil 
of others out of a heart that is not pure 
within. 

How manifold and, alas! how subtle are 
the ways of evil in the human heart, and how 
difficult a thing its culture is found to be ! 
In some things, perhaps, we are conscious 
of a likeness to Christ, telling of the reality 
of His life-giving spirit. But the growth is 
disproportionate often. There is zeal with- 



172 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

out knowledge, earnestness without charity. 
The taint of fanaticism and bigotry is seen in 
the works even of good men. Their good 
is evil spoken of and oftentimes neutralized 
through their own conceit and vanity. Every 
enterprise of philanthropy has been made to 
suffer by the wrong-headedness and indiscre- 
tions of its advocates. 

The indifference to religion, so common 
everywhere, running sometimes into con- 
tempt, is largely due to the follies of Chris- 
tians themselves. They do not always hold 
the truth nor speak the truth in love. Zeal 
for the Church runs into lying for the Church. 
Activity is not always the sign of a growing, 
thriving life. It is tainted sometimes by self- 
will and self-love, and then it will show itself 
in strifes and rivalries and jealousies and con- 
troversies. The spirit of it will be restless, 
irritable, and contentious ; far removed from 
the " sweet reasonableness " of the religion of 
Christ. The condition of growing into Christ 
in all things is wanting, and Christ Himself 
is wounded in the house of His friends. 

The root sin of all is self-will, — the cause 
of all deformity in Christian character, as it 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 1-73 

is of all confusion and disturbance in the 
Church. Where this root is allowed to spring 
up and thrive, it is impossible for the soul 
to grow up into Christ ; for the principle of 
spiritual life, which is charity, is wanting. 
The soul does not love the truth, but its own 
opinions and fancies about the truth ; forget- 
ting the Apostle's injunction not to think 
more highly of itself than it ought to thinks 
it indulges a vain conceit of its superior wis- 
dom and sanctity, running sometimes into an 
unconscious cloaking of its own faults, un- 
mindful of what is due to others, discour- 
teous in manner, unkind in thought, and 
therefore ungentle in word, inconsiderate of 
the feelings of others, and sometimes cruelly 
wounding them. 

It may well be said that charity is the chief 
of all the Christian graces ; for without it 
how much do we see that is ungraceful and 
unlovely in character. One will pride him- 
self upon his frankness : he is a plain-spoken 
man; he always speaks the truth, — but he 
does not speak it in love, and so the truth 
itself is made the weapon rudely drawn to his 
neighbor's hurt. 



174 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

It is said that the great French artist, 
Meissonier, seldom paints the face of a woman. 
His best figures are horses and soldiers. His 
genius is deficient, no doubt, in the perception 
of the highest grace and beauty. And the 
like defect is often seen in the religious life ; 
as Mr. Arnold has very happily described 
it in some of his own countrymen, who are 
not wanting in moral earnestness nor in the 
^< vigor and rigor "with which they oppose 
themselves to what they believe to be wrong, 
but are sadly deficient in the gentler graces 
of the spirit, so needful to discern all things 
in their true light and right relation to one 
another. 

In the Christian life it will not do to culti- 
vate one class of virtues to the neglect of 
another. As truth is said to be double, so 
every Christian grace has its counterpart. 
In the life of Christ, zeal, courage, tenacity, 
hatred of sin, were ever combined wdth gen- 
tleness, patience, forbearance, and love ; as in 
the character of God, goodness and severity, 
justice and mercy, are ever seen in conjunc- 
tion. It is by maintaining this divine har- 
mony that we grow up into Christ. And we 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 175 

need to cultivate perhaps, most of all^ the 
graces to which we are least inclinedj or those 
most opposed to the faults we detect in our- 
selves. Above all; we have need to guard 
against self-righteousness, that miserable fun- 
gus in the religious life that, springing really 
from spiritual decay, wears only the sem- 
blance of vitality. The cure of it is to come 
out of the darkness and meanness of our own 
conceit and self-love into the light of Christ ; 
to compare ourselves with Him, and not, 
Pharisee-like, with our neighbors. 

The dome of St. Peter's towers above all 
surrounding objects in the ancient city ; yet 
in standing before it, where the eye takes in 
the whole from base to summit, the mind 
does not seize at once the thought of its 
magnitude, — so fitly are its dimensions pro- 
portioned one to another, and so happily are 
all its parts adjusted to give the effect of 
grace and beauty to the whole. And as we 
contemplate the Christ, who is our life, do w^e 
not find the like harmony of all spiritual 
qualities in Him, — inspiring us less with awe 
than with love, not unmingled with hope ? 
There is a loftiness, indeed, that speaks to us 



176 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

of God ; but there is a breadth of human 
sympathy that tells beside how truly He was 
man, like one of us. In the mingled majesty 
and beauty of the Divine Manhood we feel 
that God has indeed come down to earth 
to visit his people. We are not driven from 
His presence by the sounding terrors of His 
broken law. We are drawn to His side in 
trust and love. There is a winning grace in 
Jesus that we would fain hope might quicken 
the germ of life in our own hearts. We 
would come to Him, and take of the spirit 
that is His. We would " grow up into Him 
in all things, which is the head, even Christ." 
If I have described truly the work of faith, 
we should look for something in those who 
are Christ's that answers to the divine type 
we behold in Him. We should hope to find 
in the Christian life, not what is forbidding and 
contentious and censorious, but rather what is 
attractive and inviting. We should look for 
righteousness without austerity, a piety with- 
out gloom, a zeal without acrimony. Along 
with vigor and activity and self-denial we 
should look for cheerfulness, a kindly judgment 
of the motives, and a tender regard for the 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 177 

feelings and wishes of others. We should look, 
in short, for grace and proportion, as beseems 
the temple of God. There would be sanctity 
without sanctimoniousness, converse in the 
things of God without cant, — the twin sister 
of lying, the affectation of a piety unknown 
to the heart. And there will be reverence, 
too, seen not merely in forms of worship, in 
oft repeated prayers and calling upon the 
name of the Lord, in bending of the knee 
and prostration of the body, but most of all 
in deeds and words which tell of the soul's 
unwavering faith in a God of truth. The 
outward worship will not belie the spirit 
within ; for this shall reveal itself w^ien the 
house of God is closed, and the hour of prayer 
is passed, — when the soul, unconscious of the 
eye and ear of God, shall speak out from the 
heart of the fulness which is there. " By 
their fruits ye shall know them." 

In him who is growing up into Christ, 
reverence indeed, both in body and spirit, 
will not be wanting, with all that we asso- 
ciate with elevation of soul, — high aims 
in life, fidelity to the claims of duty, the 
scorn of ignoble arts even in the quest of- 

12 



178 THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 

good. The temple of God must have height. 
Something of the loftiness of the Master will 
be seen in the disciple. He will not come 
down at the bidding of the Tempter. 

And along with height there will be breadth, 
even to the widest limits of Christian charity. 
There will be room in his heart for all truth 
and all beauty of spirit. The eye of faith 
takes in a wider range of Christian life and 
Christian activity than the petty systems 
begotten of the world's bigotry and the 
world's narrowness, and disguised under the 
fliir name and semblance of " the Church." 
The true Church is God's house, and it is 
large enough to hold the multitudes of God's 
people, of every kingdom and nation and 
tribe, which no man can number, and no man 
can know by outward sign and symbol, and 
no man can tell save only by the mark of the 
cross, which every follower of the Lamb shall 
bear in his forehead. 

Yes, there is breadth as well as height in 
Christian thought and Christian character. 
For they are built upon Christ, after the like- 
ness and fair proportions of the God-man ; 
the revelation of the wisdom and the love 



THE TRUTH IN LOVE. 179 

of God, by which God is reconciUng all things 
to Himself, — all things in the world of His 
creation, as its wondrous order and beauty 
are unveiled before us, — all things, too, in 
human life and human society, by which even 
the wrath of man shall be made to praise 
Him, and evil itself be transformed into 
good. 

He would have us come to see this truth 
of God in Christ, and to shape our thoughts 
of all we see and know in the universe upon 
it. So shall we speak the truth in love, and 
the truth itself shall be the forming power 
within. We too shall be built upon Him, 
resting upon the corner-stone elect, 'precious. 
"We too shall " grow up into Him in all things, 
which is the head, even Christ." 



X. 

^nototng Ctjrtst after tfje .Spirit* 




X. 

KNOWING CHEIST AFTER THE SPIRIT.^ 

^^ JSenceforth know we no man after the flesh ; yea, 
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now 
henceforth knoio we Sim no moreP — 2 Cor. v. 16. 

T is not quite clear what Paul 
meant, altogether, by ^^ knowing 
Christ after the flesh." He may 
have referred only to the Jew- 
ish tradition that was his before 
his conversion, — the Messiah appearing on 
earth in royal state, of the house of David 
and the seed of Abraham. Certainly in this 
character he knew Christ no longer from the 
hour in which his eyes were opened to dis- 
cern the Anointed One in the person of Jesus 
whom he persecuted. Henceforth his con- 
ception of Christ and His kingdom is no 
longer carnal, but spiritual. And it may 
be he would have us understand that from 

1 1881. 



184 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

this hour there followed gradually a certain 
changed relation of the external facts of 
Christianity, as narrated to him by others, to 
the spiritual ideal which those facts repre- 
sented. He knows Christ now more than 
ever after the spirit, even as the same spirit 
may appear in His true disciples. He sees 
the meaning of the death of Christ : He died 
for all, that they too should die unto sin, — 
" that they who live should henceforth not 
live unto themselves, but unto Him which 
died for them and rose again." So also the 
fact of the resurrection is spiritualized. The 
stress is now laid, as in all the later epistles 
of Paul, not upon the reanimation of the dead 
body of Jesus, but upon the life-giving spirit 
of Christ, by which the very life of God is 
communicated to all who die unto sin and 
unto self. " Wherefore," he says, " hence- 
forth know we no man after the jflesh; yea, 
though we have known Christ after the flesh, 
yet now henceforth know w^e Him no more ; " 
in other words, as we know Christ after the 
divine spirit of love and sacrifice, of righteous 
obedience and true holiness, even so by the 
same spirit do we know every man beside. 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 185 

Thus the main thing with Paul was char- 
acter. Men were to become Christian in 
spirit. Everything beside in religion and in 
human life was subordinated to this. Hence- 
forth he would know no man after the flesh, — 
that is, according to the accidents of his birth, 
— whether he were a Jew or a Gentile, a 
Greek or a barbarian. Christ died for all. 
He was the Saviour of men. God would 
have all men to be saved. Paul would judge 
no man according to any outward signs of 
divine favor, — as circumcised or uncircum- 
cised, as rich or poor, bond or free. God 
hath made of one blood all the nations of the 
earth. He is no respecter of persons ; " but 
in every nation he that feareth Him and 
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." 
Neither would he regard the forms of a man's 
worship, nor the mode of stating his opinions 
or beliefs, if so be that the spirit of Christ 
were manifestly his. 

The word " flesh," as Paul used it, was a 
comprehensive term. It included everything 
that was outward in religion ; not only every- 
thing in life and conduct opposed to the spirit 
of Christ, but everything that might appear 



186 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

in forms of worship or belief without the life 
of the spirit. We are justified therefore in 
the widest possible application of the term 
to the externals of life and religion in our 
own day. 

We who are Christians, as Paul was, will 
henceforth know no man after the flesh, but 
after the spirit. " If any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creature." And every man is in 
Christ who is baptized into His spirit. The 
baptism of water into the visible body of 
Christ may be his. That is but an outward 
or carnal relation to Christ. The baptism 
of the Holy Ghost and of fire must be his ; 
then he is a new creature indeed, born again 
of the Spirit, 

" Whose "blessed unction from above 
Is comfort, life, and fire of love." 

The same is true of the sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper. There is a carnal eating and 
drinking of the body and blood of Christ, and 
a spiritual feeding upon Him by faith. He 
who comes to the Lord's table in the spirit 
of Christ's love and obedience is verily nour- 
ished and strengthened by His spirit; he 
partakes of His divine life ; he is made " to 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 187 

grow up into Him in all things, which is 
the head." 

This is the rule by which we are to try 
ourselves. As the Apostle says, " Let a man 
examine himself [whether this loving spirit 
of Christ be his], and so let him eat of that 
bread and drink of that cup." By the same 
rule we are to be guided in our thoughts of 
others. The question is very often presented 
to us, " What are the grounds of Christian fel- 
lowship ? " There are various answers to this 
question. One will say, "Except a man be 
baptized by immersion he cannot sit with him 
at the Lord's table, nor be in full communion 
with him as a member of Christ's body." But 
this would seem to be a clear case of knowing 
a man after the flesh, and not after the spirit ; 
for manifestly one may be a Christian in 
spirit who has never been immersed nor even 
baptized after any outward form. 

Another might say that only one " who has 
been confirmed by the Bishop " shall be al- 
lowed to come to the Lord's table. Here 
again an outward or carnal test is established, 
very clearly against the rule of St. Paul. 
Therefore it is that our Church extends the 



188 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

invitation to the Lord's table to all " who 
truly repent them of their sins, and in- 
tend to lead a new life, and are in love and 
charity with their neighbor," not judging 
others by any outward mark or profession, 
but exhorting all to judge of themselves 
whether these conditions of the new and 
spiritual life of Christ are theirs ; nay, en- 
couraging those to come who may doubt of 
their fitness, but are yet conscious of their 
love to Christ, and their desire to partake of 
the fulness which is His. 

Still another carnal test of Christian fellow- 
ship is made by including only those who 
are in full communion with what are called 
evangelical churches. Here adhesion is re- 
quired to certain formal statements of doc- 
trinal belief, the acceptance or non-acceptance 
of which is no criterion of Christian character. 
There are multitudes of Christians, illustrating 
in every way the spirit of Christ, — loving 
God and their neighbor, doing to others as 
they would that others should do to them, 
known and approved of men for their right- 
eousness of life, — who are nevertheless ex- 
cluded from Christian fellowship by this test. 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT, 189 

Upon many subjects they have different opin- 
ions from their evangeUcal brethren, so called. 
They cannot subscribe to the Westminster 
Confession of Faith, nor to the Thirty-nine 
Articles, nor to the Heidelberg Catechism, 
nor to the Windsor Platform, nor even to the 
formulary of the Evangelical Alliance, as in- 
terpreted by most of its members ; and this 
is made the ground of refusing to them the 
right hand of Christian fellowship. 

Now it is this narrowing of the body of 
Christ to the dimensions of a sect which St. 
Paul for himself rejects. Every one who 
manifested the spirit of Christ he recognized 
as a brother in Christ. He was the champion, 
in those early days of the Church, of Chris- 
tian liberality ; resisting the attempts of some 
of his brother Apostles to bring all men into 
a bondage of forms, in respect of which they 
must inevitably differ, and had a right to 
think and act for themselves. Kebuking dis- 
order and confusion, he affirmed that where 
the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and 
there also, above all things, would appear the 
crowning grace of charity. 

Unquestionably there is need of something 



190 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

like common consent to certain truths of the 
Christian faith \ the life of Christian conduct 
and Christian activity in the Church implies 
such consent; but it must be required to 
those truths only which relate to the very 
spirit and essence of Christianity. There is 
no question but that all men should be agreed 
respecting obedience to the ethical precepts 
of Christianity, — that they should be rev- 
erent and chaste and honest. There is no 
difference of opinion among Christians as to 
the value of the Christian graces of humility 
and patience, of temperance and charity. 
These are of the spirit of our religion, with- 
out which Christianity would exist but in 
name and in form. It is in these, therefore, 
that the true ground of Christian unity and 
fellowship should be sought. It must be an 
unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 

For indeed unity upon any other ground 
than this is impossible. There can be no 
formal statement of theological doctrines upon 
which all good men will agree. They will 
hold various opinions respecting inspiration, 
the Trinity, the atonement, human depravity, 
and justification. Theologians have disputed 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 191 

about these doctrines for ages, and are not 
likely to be of one mind concerning them in 
all coming time. Those who receive the 
Bible as the revealed will of God will differ 
in the interpretation of it. And no greater 
mistake has ever been committed in the 
Church than to make the acceptance of any 
formal statement of doctrine a condition of 
Christian fellowship. Such statements are 
of necessity imperfect. They contain within 
themselves an element of human ignorance. 
They subject the truth of God to the limita- 
tions of human thought and human language, 
both of which are vain to give full expression 
to it. All such formal statements are there- 
fore human and carnal. They may give 
expression to spiritual truth and spiritual 
feeling, as dwelling in the mind and heart 
of man, or they may not. Undoubtedly they 
have their use as helps to reach the truth. 
It is well that the Church should give such 
expression, from age to age, to her belief. 
But the moment she imposes it upon the 
mind of her members as a limit to their 
thought or a bar to their inquiry, she takes 
away their freedom to follow and be led by 



192 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

the Spirit of God. The essential principle of 
Protestantism is this freedom of thought, the 
right of private judgment. And there is no 
other guaranty than this of continued growth 
in the knowledge and love of God. 

No doubt this liberty will be abused. It is 
abused by those who are w^ithout reverence 
and without faith, without those graces of 
the Divine Spirit which appear in every life 
that is truly Christian. But there is no dan- 
ger of its abuse by him who is led by the 
Spirit of God ; for that Spirit, the Master says, 
shall lead him into all truth. He will discern 
the truth as contained in the pages of Holy 
Writ. He will accept it gratefully as the 
heritage of wisdom and piety, transmitted 
from age to age in the Christian Church. He 
will rejoice in the fellowship of kindred spirits, 
the world over, who are knit together by 
their common love for the truth which has 
found its best expression in the life and teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ. This, the very substance 
of his religion, he will cherish and defend 
with his latest breath. And this shall be the 
treasure that he will carry with him into the 
world of light and life beyond, where he shall 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 193 

no longer see, as he must see here, " through 
a glass darkly, but then face to face." 

God would have us use these gifts of 
reason and understanding which He has be- 
stowed upon His children here, enhghtened 
as they may be by the Divine Spirit. He 
would have us grow in knowledge and in 
wisdom, as in reverence and devotion to His 
will. And though His gifts are variously 
apportioned, there is not one to whom all 
knowledge of the truth is given, nor yet one 
to whom all knowledge is denied, not one 
who ' may bury his gift in the earth. We 
know very well the central truths of Chris- 
tianity as they affect the life. We can all 
exercise our minds and our hearts upon them 
as they are unfolded before us in the words 
of Jesus; and by God's help we can enter 
more deeply than we are apt to think into 
the meaning of those darker sayings of His, 
the truth of which, though hidden from the 
wise and prudent of the world, is revealed 
unto babes who are born of the Spirit, and in 
whose hearts the spirit of love and of truth 
has found its habitation. 

If the spirit of Christ be ours, we shall dis- 

13 



194 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

cover it and welcome it with a glad recogni- 
tion wheresoever it shall reveal itself in our 
intercourse with men. We shall see it in the 
lives of those who are busied in the great 
industries of the world, by which our com- 
mon wants are supplied, and the earth is 
made to abound in things meet for our com- 
fort and enjoyment. We shall rejoice in the 
hand of the diligent that maketh rich, by 
means that are just and true to his neighbor; 
whose " lips shall not speak wickedness nor 
his tongue utter deceit ; " who " doeth the 
thing which is right and speaketh the truth 
from his heart." 

We shall require at the hands of those who 
make and administer the laws of our land, 
that they be faithful to the trust reposed in 
them by the people ; and this shall be more, 
in our esteem, than allegiance to party. We 
shall look to the character of our public ser- 
vants, from the village trustee up to the 
chief magistrate of the nation. 

The same test we shall apply to the litera- 
ture of our time, which contains within itself 
an influence so potent in the formation of 
individual and national character. It may be 



KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 195 

doubted whether this influence outside of the 
visible Church may not be in our day greater 
than within it; for many of the teachers 
and thinkers of the world now are not of the 
clergy, nor even professedly religious. The 
pulpit is no longer the relative power which 
it once was ; it now divides its power with 
the press. But thanks be to God, through 
Christ, the civilization of our age is unmis- 
takably Christian. In thousands of the books 
that have no direct assertion of a religious 
object, there is a spirit of love and truth to 
which we cannot deny the name of Christian. 
Would that we could say the same of all 
the issues of the religious press, so-called ! 
Unhappily, the spirit of the world more 
than the spirit of Christ will sometimes ani- 
mate the utterances of those who are called 
by His name. They know Christ after the 
flesh ; their thoughts of His kingdom are 
carnal ; they do evil that good may come. 
We must try the spirits, whether they write 
or speak the truth in love ; and as we may 
not withhold our condemnation of all in the 
world and in the Church which opposes itself 
to the spirit of Christ, so we may rejoice in 



/ 



196 KNOWING CHRIST AFTER THE SPIRIT. 

the tokens of that spirit, wherever beheld, in 
the full belief that God is hastening the com- 
ing of His kingdom by other means than 
those which He is pleased to employ in His 
visible Church. " The kingdom of God com- 
eth not with observation : neither shall they 
say, Lo here 1 or, Lo there ! for, behold, the 
kingdom of God is within you." 



XI. 




XI. 

CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN.i 
^^ For our conversation is in heavenJ' — Phil. iii. 20. 

N the revised translation we read 
more correctly, ^^ Our citizen' 
ship is in heaven." The Apos- 
tle means to say that we are 
members of a spiritual com- 
monwealth, invisible to the outward eye, but 
no less real than the political systems which 
exist on the earth. As citizens of this com- 
monwealth, we are partakers of its privileges 
and subject to its laws. Then, as in the 
state or city of this world there is an affec- 
tion called " public spirit," which implies an 
interest in the common welfare, a certain 
individual representation of its peculiar civic 
life, so there is an interest, a spirit, a habit, 

1 1883. 



200 CITIZENSHIP IN HE A PEN. 

which distinguishes the heavenly life and 
marks the citizens of the heavenly city. 

Paul is addressing the Christians at Phi- 
lippi, a city memorable in the annals of the 
Eoman Empire for the victory achieved by 
Mark Antony over Brutus, and afterwards 
gifted by Augustus with the privileges of a 
Eoman colony ; still more famous as the first 
European city in which Paul was permitted 
to plant the banner of the cross. And here 
it was, in the city " which/' it has been said,* 
" was more fit than any other in the empire to 
be considered the representative of imperial 
Eome," — here it was that Paul asserted for 
himself and Silas the rights of citizenship, 
which had been grossly violated in their 
scourging and imprisonment. 

In writing now, however, to the little band 
of disciples in Philippi, he is more concerned 
with the maintenance of their privileges as 
freemen in the kingdom of Christ and of 
God. Beset with temptations to the idolatry 
of power, he would remind them of their alle- 
giance to their Heavenly King. He is sad- 
dened even to tears by the moral corruption 

^ Hovvson and Conybeare. 



CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 201 

in the midst of which their lot is cast, — the 
shameless sensuality, the enmity to the cross 
of Christ, the absorption of all interest and 
affection in the perishable things of time. 
He would keep before them the reality of 
their hidden life with Christ, the fact of their 
present citizenship in the city of God, with all 
of protection from evil and of faithful ser- 
vice which that relation implies. 

The conditions of social and civic life in 
our own midst are not the same as with the 
Christians at Philippi. We are not exposed, 
as they were, to popular violence, nor to the 
brutal abuse of power. We do not witness 
the shameless corruption of morals to which 
Paul referred. Nevertheless the analogy 
which his words suggest may well claim our 
attention to-day. The rulers of the earth — 
the Augustuses, the Neros, the Caligulas — 
pass away ; but the Christ, the King of Truth, 
abides forever. Under His rule the law of 
our spiritual life is unchanged. The same 
gifts and graces, the same hopes and prom- 
ises, and — if not quite the same in form — 
the like sacrifices and trials, with those of the 
early saints, are ours to-day. Nor is the gen- 



202 CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 

eral relation which the Christian Church sus- 
tains to the world without materially affected 
by any external changes which have been 
wrought in the lapse of centuries. There is 
a wisdom of the world still, that is earthly, 
sensual, devilish. There are selfish desires 
and ambitions that sway the hearts of men. 
Every Christian grace has its antagonist in 
the human breast ; and the conflict ends only 
with life. 

The name of Nero in the time of Paul rep- 
resented an earthly power which set itself 
against the righteousness of God. It was 
Antichrist then. Under widely different forms 
the spirit of Antichrist is still contending for 
the supremacy. The temptation to worldli- 
ness in a Christian community abounding in 
wealth and surrounded by all the arts of 
luxury may be greater than to the members 
of an infant church drawn mostly from the 
poorer classes, and struggling, against ad- 
verse conditions, for its very existence. None 
the less vigilant, then, must the believer 
be against the powers of darknq^s, none the 
less faithful in cherishing the gift of the 
life eternal. He accepts the analogy which 



CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 203 

the Apostle's words import. A citizen of 
the world, with relations divinely appointed, 
to its government, its society, its arts, its in- 
dustries, and its pleasures, he is mindful of 
the higher citizenship that is his in the 
republic of God. For you will observe that 
the Apostle does not say that our conversa- 
tion shall he in heaven. It is not of some far- 
away possession to which we are altogether 
strangers now and here, that he is speaking. 
It is of an invisible rule in the hearts of men, 
— a spiritual life, already begun, whose en- 
ergies and desires, whose hopes and whose 
joys, know nothing of the limitations of time, 
because they partake of the eternity of God. 
" Now, therefore," says Paul to the believers 
in Ephesus, " ye are no more strangers and 
foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, 
and of the household of God." Pilgrims and 
strangers indeed ye are on the earth, if so be 
that ye have ceased to mind earthlj^ things, — 
if your affection is set on things that are above, 
things that are good and true and right 
and beautiful and lovely in the sight of God. 
For ye are dead to those things which 
your conscience condemns, and your life, 



204 CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 

your true life, is the invisible, the hidden life 
of Christ in God. 

How can words like these be made true to 
the experience of believers now? Only as 
they are true to their citizenship in the heav- 
ens ; only as their hearts are even now in a 
state of heavenly affection, seeking and en- 
joying the treasures of heaven, the goods 
and the truths of the heavenly life. Then it 
may be said of them, as of the saints of old : 
They have no continuing city here \ they 
seek a city that is an heavenly. 

The Scripture revelation of heaven is one 
addressed only to our spiritual nature. Nor 
can there be any hope of heaven to the heart 
that is a stranger to the moral and spiritual 
affections that we associate with the name 
and work of Christ. Are we His in spirit, 
hating the sins which alienate the soul from 
God, loving His way among men. His truth 
of the Father, His heavenly life on the earth ? 
Then the heaven that is His is ours also. 
He spake of " the Son of Man, which is in 
heaven," and He prayed, " Father, I will that 
they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with 
me where I am." This He said, not of the 



CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 205 

future ; for He also says, '' The glory which 
Thou gavest me, I have given them." In 
speaking of things eternal and heavenly, He 
knows nothing of the conditions of time — its 
present, past, and future — except in connec- 
tion with things that are earthly and temporal. 
But He contrasts the antagonisms of earth and 
heaven, of things morally good and morally 
evil. The latter are corruptible, and therefore 
transient ; but the former are incorruptible 
and eternal in their very essence. 

The heavenly life will therefore be viewed 
now in its connection with things earthly and 
temporal. The spiritual-minded Christian 
stands related to the present visible world 
no less than to the invisible and the eternal. 
He is subject here to the powers which be. 
There is an ordering of human life for the 
time that now is, in which he is interested, — 
a rule of law in the State, an intercourse of 
men in society, a contact with the external 
world and all the beautiful and glorious 
things which it contains ; a dependence, too, 
upon its productive powers, whence come the 
arts useful and decorative, whence also the 
lawful pleasures of the life that now is.^ 



206 CITIZENSHIP IN HEAVEN. 

We may not forget this linking of our 
spiritual nature to the material and sensible 
world in which God has given us our being 
for a time. And so the inquiry comes to us, 
How^ shall we reconcile our spiritual and eter- 
nal life with our temporal, — our citizenship 
in the heavens, with all it implies of affection, 
of duty and activity, with these ties which 
bind us for a time to earth ? Is it God's will 
that our thoughts and our interests and our 
hopes should be altogether estranged from 
the things of earth ? Is he whose conversa- 
tion is in heaven to ignore the ties which 
now bind him to society ? Must the citizen- 
ship of heaven be forever at variance with 
the citizenship of earth ? Must the heart 
that is set on heavenly things be indifferent 
to the good things of time, which, though in 
themselves perishable, are nevertheless the 
gift of God ? Or is it the will of God that 
the things of earth which are ours, and must 
be ours for a time, shall be made to minister 
to the life of heaven, — that all these present 
relations and these necessary pursuits and 
enjoyments shall be so emptied of the moral 
evil which corrupts them, so transformed by 



CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN, 207 

the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, that, 
harmonized with the Divine will, and digni- 
fied and glorified in the sight of men, they 
shall become symbols of the order and the 
beauty and the glory of the life eternal ? 
This, I understand, to be the end for which 
we pray, when we say, " Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in 
heaven." 

In the individual life of the spiritually 
minded Christian this prayer is already an- 
swered. His heart is the abode of heavenly 
affections. " The kingdom of God is within 
you," says the Master. These words are 
verified in the experience of every true dis- 
ciple in proportion to his love for Christ 
and the things that are His. But the indi- 
vidual does not live for himself, nor pray for 
himself, alone. His life is bound up with 
that of his fellow-men. His prayers are for 
them no less than for himself. He sustains 
to the world of mankind relations that are 
sacred, civil, social, domestic ; and manifold 
duties grow out of these relations. He can- 
not rid himself of these on the plea that he 
has renounced the world, and has no continu- 



208 CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 

ing city here. A citizen of heaven, Paul did 
not forget that he was also a Roman citizen. 
Whatever of justice there was in Roman 
rule, he made the most of. His reproof of 
those who mind earthly things was a re- 
buke of selfishness, ambition, sensuality, and 
every form of moral evil which debases the 
individual and corrupts society. And when 
he spoke of a spirit and a life opposed to 
these, it was in the hope that the hearts of 
all men might be pervaded by them ; that 
they should be made manifest throughout 
the world in the rule of righteous men, in 
a regenerated society, in the redemption of 
the human race from the sins with which it 
is cursed. 

Clearly, then, one whose citizenship is in 
heaven will do his best to extend the privi- 
leges and blessings of that citizenship. He 
will try to bring heaven down to earth by 
the kindly, loving spirit that animates him in 
his intercourse with men, by his example of 
uprightness, his truth and honor and integ- 
rity ; by his active interest in every good 
word and work that shall minister to the 
welfare of his fellow-men, in the suppression 



CITIZENSHIP IN HE A VEN. 209 

of vice and the maintenance of virtue. No 
duty of good citizenship on earth will be 
wanting to him who is a fellow-citizen with 
the saints and of the household of God. 

I am more and more convinced that the 
manifestation of a heavenly spirit, and the 
attempt to realize, so far as possible, for 
the individual and for society the heavenly 
life, are together the main thing in our reli- 
gion ; for I see in the divine law to which the 
citizen of heaven shall conform, in the divine 
order which God has revealed for society, 
and in the divine life which is made mani- 
fest in Christ, — I see in these the foreshad- 
owing of the New Jerusalem, which John 
beheld in the vision, coming down from God 
out of heaven, — the earnest of the new 
heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. 



14 



XII. 

Confessing Cljnst 



XII. 

CONFESSING CHEIST.^ 

'^Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him 
will I confess also before my Father which is in 
heaven.''^ — St. Matt. x. 32. 




HEN these words were first spo- 
ken the confession of Christ 
was attended with some peril. 
Conscious of the dangers that 
were gathering about him, Je- 
sus anticipated, very early in his ministry, 
the tragedy in which it was likely to close. 
He saw, too, very clearly the fellowship of 
suffering in the future of those who were 
now the nearest to His person, and charged 
with His mission of truth. They were sent 
forth as sheep in the midst of wolves ; they 
should be scourged in the synagogues ; they 
should be brought before governors and kings 

1 1883. 



214 CONFESSING CHRIST. 

among the Gentiles, for His sake ; they 
should be persecuted from city to city. The 
disciple should not be above his Master, nor 
the servant above his Lord. 

And so it was in fact. The corner-stone 
of the Christian Church, with its foundation 
of Prophets and Apostles, was laid in blood. 
And here we have the secret of its perpetuity. 
It was tried by the severest test which the 
world could apply, and it endured the test. 
Its truth was mightier than the world's 
power; its love was stronger than the 
world's hate. If there had not been some- 
thing permanent and indestructible in the 
materials with which the edifice was build- 
ing, the fires of persecution would have swept 
it out of existence. But in the wisdom of 
God it was to be made fire-proof, and sub- 
jected to the proof, that the world might 
know of what it was made, and what would 
stand in the day when all things else should 
crumble and vanish away. 

They who suffered in those early days for 
the truth's sake had something which they 
valued above life itself. Has the treasure 
been transmitted to our own time, and is 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 215 

there any like testing of its value among 
Christians now ? 

• Unquestionably it was the intent of the 
Master that the building should be completed 
after the divine pattern that was revepJed to 
the world in Himself. Each stone in the 
temple of God should bear upon its front the 
mark of the cross. In all its parts, and in 
every stage of its erection, the unity of its 
design should appear. No material could be 
used in the building, that did not partake of 
the quality and durability of the corner-stone. 
For every man's work should be tried, of 
what sort it is. The fires of persecution 
might be extinguished, but the fires of temp- 
tation should continue to burn ; and only 
the heart that was firm in the truth and the 
love of Christ could stand before them. 

Jesus knew very well the dangers which 
attended the confession of His name by the 
Apostles. He contemplated the certainty of 
a denial and even of the betrayal of Him- 
self by some of the verj^ men whom He had 
appointed to continue His ministry. And 
He saw that His truth would encounter the 
hke perils through all time. Many would be 



216 COA'FESSING CHRIST. 

afraid to make the confession of His name ; 
many would be tempted, both by their fears 
and by their desires, to deny Him before men. 
It is not merely by word of mouth, nor by 
any formal act of Christian fellowship alone, 
that Christ is confessed in the world. Nor is it 
•alone by any deliberate and outspoken rejec- 
tion of Christ, that He is denied. Every 
open act of Christian duty that involves 
self-denial is a confession of His name. 
Every yielding of the heart to ways which a 
loyal sense of obligation to God and the right 
forbids, every refusal to obey the call of duty 
from a love of ease or of pleasure or of gain, 
is a denial of His name. 

How wide a margin is left for the play 
of conscience, beyond the things which are 
positively forbidden or positively required of 
Christian men ! Great liberty is now allowed 
so far as outward compulsion is concerned. 
Men may do or refuse to do many things of 
which the written law of God takes no cog- 
nizance. They are left to the law of duty 
written on the heart. 

Surely life, when we look at it as we 
ought, is no less serious to an earnest man 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 217 

to-day, than when men were persecuted from 
city to city or burnt at the stake for their 
opinions. The greater latitude allowed to 
one's choice of things to be done or left un- 
done, the more subtle the danger of yielding 
to the natural wishes and feelings of the 
heart. If one can always do as he pleases, he 
is very apt to be best pleased with a service 
that costs him nothing, or next to nothing. 
When outward restraints are removed and 
outward dangers cease, unseen dangers mul- 
tiply. The greatest need in the Church of 
Christ to-day is to guard against these. There 
can be no true spiritual life without some 
kind of discipline, — without doing some things 
that are irksome, and leaving imdone some 
things that are pleasurable. The way of life 
is not less narrow, and the gate is not less 
strait to-day, than when Jesus said the word 
to His disciples. 

There is a certain recognized standard of 
right and wrong in every Christian com- 
munity, by which the lives and the deeds of 
men are measured. We say of any particu- 
lar act, that it is good or bad, according to 
the moral conceptions that we have formed 



218 CONFESSING CHRIST. 

under Christian teaching. So of a certain 
general course of life and conduct, we silently 
pronounce it worthy or unworthy of the 
Christian name. The standard is not quite 
the same with another that obtains among 
worldly men so called. For though there 
are few without some sense of right and 
wrong, there are many in whom the moral 
sense is but feebly developed. Thus we find 
that practices are sometimes common, in trade 
and politics, which business men and politi- 
cians do not condemn in others, because they 
employ them or wish to employ them them- 
selves, notwithstanding a little reflection 
would lead them to acknowledge their wrong- 
fulness. In the social world also the prevail- 
ing notions of what is allowable are lower 
than the carefully formed opinions of persons 
familiar with the rules of living in the re- 
corded words of Jesus. And so it is that 
many conscientious persons are reluctant to 
assume the vows of the life called Christian 
because they think — and very truly — that 
these vows bind them to a certain way of 
living which is above the prevailing one; 
honestly saying to themselves that they are 



CONFESSING CHRIST, 219 

much more likely to follow the latter, while 
perhaps in their minds they approve the for- 
mer. They are afraid of the temptation 
to deny the name of Christ, before which 
they see so many others fall ; and in the si- 
lent refusal to confess that name before men^ 
they go down to the grave. There is no 
mistaken estimate here of human frailty 
under the stress of temptation. They are 
right in what they see of the world about 
them. Men are weak and selfish, yielding 
oftener to the baser motives of human life 
than to the high behests of duty; and thei/ 
confess to a share in the common weak- 
ness. Christianity, as they understand it, is 
something above them. They are neither 
worthy nor willing to be Christ's ; and 
Christ's they certainly will not be, either in 
this world or the next. 

We are told that in nature the higher 
types of organic life are reached by a process 
of selection. Under certain favorable condi- 
tions of food and atmosphere and shelter, 
health, growth, development, are found. These 
conditions wanting, a low vitality ensues, with 
decline, disease, and final extinction. Now the 



220 CONFESSING CHRIST. 

like principle obtains in the religious life. 
Wherever the genuine teachings of Christianity 
prevail, there is a process of selection con- 
stantly going on. The conditions favorable 
to the growth of a spiritual life are found, — 
the meat which the world knows not of; the 
water fresh from the well of life, of which if 
a man drink he shall never thirst ; the shelter 
of a serene trust in the Father of heaven, the 
very atmosphere of heaven. There are those 
who gladly accept these conditions, and are 
drawn to Christ by a life-giving spirit akin 
to His. They hear His words, — His Ser- 
mon on the Mount, His parables, His last 
discourse to His disciples. There is a truth 
in them which they love. They are spirit 
and they are life. If they can only take that 
truth into their own life, they will live in- 
deed, and not die \ for the divine manhood 
that was His becomes their own. It survives 
the trial to which others succumb ; and a sur- 
vival indeed of the fittest it ivill be in the 
day of His appearing. 

The process I have described is not an 
easy one. It may be thought that among 
Christians themselves there are few who an- 



CONFESSING CHRIST. 221 

swer to the type just given. Certainly the 
confession of incompleteness is a common one 
among the best of men. They are conscious 
of a reality immeasurably above them, but 
which nevertheless they are striving to 
reach. In some form or other, the trial of 
their faith is never wanting. They are men 
of like passions with all others. They have 
the like natural affections, subjecting them 
often to strong appeals to their self-love and 
self-will and self-interest. But, unlike others, 
their faith in God and in Christ is an abiding 
one. Their wills are subdued to the Divine 
will ; their affections are ruled by a divine 
love. The spirit which distinguishes them 
above others is the spirit of self-denial. This 
it is which unites them to Christ, and makes 
them worthy of the Name which is above 
every name. They are confessing Christ be- 
fore men, shrinking from no duty, yielding 
to no solicitation addressed either to their 
hopes or their fears. They are the loyal 
servants of the Master whom they have 
sworn to follow. And by such as these the 
name of Christ is honored, both in earth and 
heaven. "For whosoever shall confess me 



222 CONFESSING CHRIST. 

before men, him will I also confess before my 
Father which is in heaven." 

There was once a legion of Christian sol- 
diers in the service of a Roman emperor. 
The mandate came to the army, that all 
shonld do sacrifice to the gods, on pain of 
death to every one that refused. The Chris- 
tian legion to a man refused, preferring the 
sacrifice of life itself on the altar of duty. 

In the great and busy world to-day, many 
legions of Christian soldiers are mingled with 
their fellows in the strife for place and for- 
tune. And there is a god of this world be- 
fore whom all are summoned to fall down 
and worship. Who that has named the name 
of Christ will do sacrifice to this god by a 
word or a deed which his conscience re- 
proves, or by silence or inaction when a 
word or an act for the honor of Christ be 
required ? 



XIII. 



XIII. 

CHEIST THE AECHETYPE.^ 

" These are the generations of the heavens and the 
earth ivhen they were created, in the day that the 
Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every 
plant of the field before it luas in the earth, and every 
herb of the field before it grew.^^ — Gen. ii. 4, 5. 

WISH to call your attention to 
something in these words which 
I think escapes the notice of 
the casual reader. We are told 
that every plant of the field 
was made by God lefore it was in the earth, 
and every herb of the field lefore it grew. 
One might ask, " How can a plant be said 
to be made before it is in the earth ? Is not 
the making of it the very process itself of its 
growth ? " When we say that a builder makes 
a house, we have in mind the act of making, 

1 1882. 
15 




226 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 

the bringing together the materials, the 
fitting them to their several places, the whole 
process of construction from the beginning 
to the end. In like manner, when we say 
that God made the heavens and the earth, 
we naturally think of some process of crea- 
tion by which the materials are first brought 
into existence and then fashioned into the 
visible forms which meet the eye above and 
around us. And we are quite right in this 
thought of creation. For the hand of God 
is revealed to us alike in the revolutions of 
suns and planets ; in the earth, as we now see 
it, fitted, furnished, and adorned for the habi- 
tation of man ; the earth, too, as we have 
come to know it in the stratified rocks be- 
neath our feet, and the elements themselves 
which form its substance. Nay, in the growth 
of every blade of grass which draws its life 
from the base material below and its color 
from the sunshine above, in the whole pro- 
cess of shaping and beautifying the fair world 
in which we live, we see the creating, vivifying 
power of God. 

But now, if we believe that all this is the 
handiwork of God, and that it did not come 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 227 

by cliance, must we not also believe that this 
creative power was wielded by a divine in- 
telligence ; that back of this almighty hand 
there was an omniscient mind, planning, di- 
recting, and fashioning from the first, so 
that nothing ever came into existence that 
did not have its archetype in the mind of 
the Maker? It is this which the writer of our 
text meant when he said that ^^ the Lord God 
made every plant of the field hefore it was 
in the earth, and every herb of the field 
hefore it grew." They were formed and 
fashioned in the mind of God before they 
were actually created. In the same sense 
the builder of a house, if he is also its archi- 
tect, may be said to have made the house 
before it is built. This is the meaning of the 
word '' architect." He is the one who does the 
work in the beginning. First of all, he forms 
the plan of the house, and then directs its 
construction. So Michael Angelo made St. 
Peter's ere the first stone of its foundations 
was laid. It was the work of his mind, 
the creation of his genius. Its vast propor- 
tions, its symmetry, its beauty, even its 
materials, and a thousand minute details of 



228 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 

construction, existed in thought before they 
received the visible and material form in 
which they now appear. So the Apollo Bel- 
videre and the Venus de' Medici each had 
its being in the mind of the sculptor before 
the block of marble was touched by the work- 
man's chisel. He saw it in the shapeless 
mass beside him. He fashioned it, first in the 
yielding clay and then in the stone that should 
last until his fame had filled the earth. 

Now the Bible tells us that the world was 
made in like manner by God. And if we 
credit the fact of creation, we are . to believe 
that the whole structure of the universe, even 
to its most minute details of substance and 
form, was in the mind of God from the be- 
ginning to the end ; and inasmuch as this 
work of God is not yet finished, — for we 
see it every day with our eyes, and we our- 
selves are consciously the subjects of it, — 
we are to believe that the process will con- 
tinue under His hand and His ej'e forever ; 
and woe be to the man Vv^ho sets himself 
against it ! 

I will not stop here to argue with those 
who tell us that the universe is but the for- 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 229 

tuitous concourse of atoms ; that the move- 
ment of the planets and the structure of the 
eye are accidents; that the wonderful mech- 
anism of the human body, and the still more 
wonderful endowments of the human mind, 
are but the chance result of a process of 
natural selection undirected hy intelligence^ in 
which man himself is the subject and creature 
of a blind force, with no intelligible and 
worthy purpose in his creation. If there be 
no design in the world about us, and the rela- 
tion which we sustain to it, then the most 
foolish waste a man can make of his time 
is to spend it in the study of nature itself; 
for what avails his knowledge if there be no 
good and noble end for himself and his race, 
to which all things in the visible world are 
pointing ? 

Keeping in mind, then, the truth that God by 
wisdom made the world, and made it, too, with 
a purpose related to ourselves, we see the bear- 
ing of this truth upon our life. Clearly, we 
should seek by knowledge to enter into the 
mind of God, so far as possible, in respect 
of every created object, and especially in 
respect of ourselves. If there be a purpose 



230 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 

in the mind of God, according to which He 
has been working from the first, and if the gift 
is ours to discover to some extent what that 
purpose is, then the wisest use we can make 
of this gift is to apply it toward the fulfil- 
ment of that purjDose. If there has been 
from the first a divine archetype of our 
humanity, then, so far as this is made known 
to us, it shall be the model distinctly kept 
before us. We are God's w^orkmanship, and 
we are to work up by the Divine Spirit that 
is in us, as co-workers with God,^ to the high- 
est conscious ideals of human life and con- 
duct. Without the faith to inspire men with 
some such aims and hopes as these, there will 
be no true science. The Scriptures lay great 
stress upon the knowledge of God, meaning 
the knowledge of His laws in nature and in 
human society. The secret of the Lord is 
with them that fear Him, discerning the im- 
press of a divine hand and the wisdom of 
a divine mind in the world about them, and 
listening to the revelation of a divine will 
and the whisperings of a divine spirit, ever 
guiding in the way of truth. 

1 Eph. ii. 10. 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE, 231 

It is no story of fiction that tells us liow 
the great teacher and lawgiver of Israel was 
led up of the Spirit into the mount, there to 
receive the inspiration by which he was to 
make known the mind of God and the way 
of God for His people. The mission was his 
to reveal to Israel, not the whole truth indeed, 
but something better in life and worship than 
the world had known beside. He gave them 
the best knowledge to be had in those early 
days, for the health and happiness and pros- 
perity of the people, — a moral law for the 
maintenance of private and social virtue ; a 
sanitary law to protect their bodies from 
disease ; a law of worship to guard them 
from the debasing idolatries of the nations 
about them. And he impressed upon the 
minds of the people the belief that these laws 
were made known to him by God. The gift 
was his of an enlightening spirit which en- 
abled him to profit by the lessons of experi- 
ence, by the traditions of wisdom, by the use 
of the reason, the judgment, the moral sense, 
that were his. He believed, and taught the 
people to believe, that it was their highest 
wisdom to understand and to obey this divine 



232 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 

revelation. He had in view for himself and 
the people whom he ruled, a pattern of right- 
eous living, an order of reverent worship, a 
model of a God-fearing State, for the educa- 
tion of the people, and the moral and reli- 
gious culture of the generations to come, — 
the wisest system known to the ancient world; 
to last, as indeed it did last, until the world 
was prepared for something better. 

Was he not right in believing that this 
law was divine, though it were but the 
shadow of good things to come, though des- 
tined to give place in time to a fuller revela- 
tion of the Divine mind ? " And look," he 
tells us of the voice of God in the record of 
his inspiration, — ^' look that thou make them 
after their pattern, which was showed thee in 
the mount," — a saying more than once re- 
peated, and twice brought to our notice in 
the New Testament, showing how constantly 
he kept before himself and the people whom 
he taught the reality of a God-given type of 
life and worship. 

That vision of Moses in the mount of God 
was preserved in the record which he left 
behind him; and it was the labor of the 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 233 

teachers and prophets who followed him to 
draw the eyes of the people to the sacred- 
ness of the pattern of life and worship which 
it revealed. Whatever of greatness Israel 
reached among the nations, and whatever is 
of highest value in the heritage she has trans- 
mitted to us, is due to the fliith in that divine 
reality which Moses did so much to inspire. 

I need not tell you that the vision of Moses 
in the mount was an imperfect one. From 
the lofty eminence it was given him to reach, 
in his communion with God, he looked for- 
ward to a land that was afar off, and to a 
kingdom and rule in the distant future for 
which the nation and the world were not yet 
prepared, even as from Mount Nebo he looked 
away upon the promised land. A prophet 
greater than himself should arise to make 
known the mind of God and give the law to 
Israel. The Christian faith accepts the gospel 
history as furnishing the archetype in which 
all the types and shadows of good things in 
the world before are fulfilled, telling of a 
worship of God in spirit and in truth ; a law 
of God in the hearts of men, by which the 
likeness of God shall be seen in the lives of 



234 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE, 

men; of the kingdom of God that shall come 
on the earth, as it is in the heavens. 

Now this, brethren, is our creed. We 
believe that we have not only the patterns 
of heavenly things, but the heavenly things 
themselves, — the mind of God, the heart 
of God, the truth and the life of God, — made 
known to us in Christ. There are times, 
too, when these lofty ideals are precious. We 
have gone up with Christ to the mount of 
God, and we have looked with longing eyes 
upon the heavenly things which He has 
shown us there. We have felt perhaps as 
Peter felt, on the Mount of Transfiguration, 
when the gloiy of Jesus was unveiled before 
him and the voice was heard from above, — 
" This is my beloved Son : hear ye Him." 
And we too would fain hear Him, and dwell 
with Him in the mount, saying, " Lord, it is 
good for us to be here." 

Alas, that these lofty ideals of the Christian 
life shoukl be so often forgotten, or beheld 
but as the dim shadows of a glory that is 
fading and vanishing away from our hearts ! 
Ah, beloved, it is no light thing to be 
allowed an insight into the mind of God 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 235 

concerning ourselves, and then, when we have 
looked upon the image of that divine sonship 
which the Father would make our own, to 
turn away in sorrow, confessing that it is not 
for us. It is not the reaction from any reli- 
gious ecstasy that is to be lamented ; for it is 
impossible that states of exalted feeling which 
may have sometimes been known should be 
permanent. It is the letting down of our 
aims in life ; the yielding up of our convic- 
tions of what is true and right and becoming 
the dignity of our Christian manhood. It is 
the gradual sapping and wearing away of 
that foundation of principle upon which all 
Christian character must rest, under the 
subtle influences about us, which, if not posi- 
tively evil in themselves, are alien to the 
spirit of our religion. 

How many things are men tempted to do, 
which in their better moments the silent 
monitor within forbids ? It is in these better 
moments that we are in the mount with God. 
It is then that the heavenly things are shown 
us. Shall we forsake these and go down to 
the multitudes in the valley below, and fall 
down with them before the idols of earth? 



236 CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE, 

Fortunes are made in the business world by 
practices which no good man can allow with- 
out the loss of his honor. In society arts are 
employed and manners indulged which wear 
away the finer sense of things becoming, — 
the flower of all true grace and courtesy. 
Have we no ideals of spiritual beauty that 
are worth preserving ? Is there no curb to 
be put upon that unruly member the tongue ? 
Perhaps most of all, in ordinary social inter- 
course, does the need of a moral culture ap- 
pear, that implies the restraints and kindly 
motions of a spirit habitually Christian. 

If there have ever been in our minds some 
worthy conception of manners and conduct, 
some standard of right which our highest 
reason has set before us, some beauteous 
vision of the land that is afar off, in God's 
name let us hold it fast. There are thousands 
in the world about us who go through life 
with no aim whatever, except the miserably 
low and selfish one of extracting from it 
as much of pleasure and profit as possible. 
Others are drifting along in the current, 
whirled about in its eddies, accepting the 
notions and beliefs and opinions and prac- 



CHRIST THE ARCHETYPE. 23T 

tices of their associates, whoever thej happen 
to be. The virtues of loyalty to truth and 
fidelity to some fixed purpose of right are 
unknown to them. They are not vicious 
after the prevailing standard of morals. They 
are simply indifferent to the loftier aims of 
human life wdiich the Spirit of God reveals. 
Let us remember that when these are un- 
heeded we are opposing the purpose of God 
in our creation. The pattern of heavenly 
things must needs be kept before us, as before 
the children of Israel, to save us from the 
manifold idolatries of the world ; much more 
the heavenly things themselves, that we may 
walk worthy of our high calling in Christ. 
If God had such regard for us that every 
creature beside of His making had some de- 
sign of good in our behalf, some beauty and 
utility and glory that should enter into this 
life of ours, that God Himself should be glori- 
fied by the perfecting of His handiwork on 
earth, how should we seek, by the labor of 
our minds and the keeping of our hearts, to 
enter into this design of His, so beneficent to 
ourselves, so worthy of our spirits, in the 
hour of our conscious nearness to Him ! 



XIV. 

ff)e Eato of Cljrist 




XIV. 

THE LAW OF CHEIST.i 

'^ All things have been created through Him, and unto 
Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all 
things consist^ — Col. i. 16; 17. 

HERE is a theological meaning 
in these words, of which I do 
not propose now to inquire. I 
will only say that in the re- 
vised translation, which I have 
chosen as the more correct, there are one or 
two changes, seemingly trivial, but really 
significant. Instead of reading '^ all things 
have been created hy Him," we read " all 
things have been created through Him ; " and 
instead of " ht/ Him all things consist," we read 
that " in Him all things consist." In other 
words, we behold in the Christ-life the final 
cause of creation, as made known to us. All 

1 1882. 
16 



242 THE LAW OF CHRIST. 

things, in the visible and invisible world, re- 
lating to human life and conduct, consist, or 
stand together, in Christ. He is the key- 
stone in the arch of creation ; and so long as 
He holds that place in the minds and hearts 
of men, all things maintain with Him their 
true place and relation. In Him the dis- 
cords of life are harmonized, its enigmas 
solved, its antagonisms reconciled, its loftiest 
aims and most precious ideals realized. In 
Him, "• who is the image of the invisible God, 
the first-born of all creation," we see the 
meaning and purpose of all things beside. 
All are created for Him; and through Him 
and in Him the end of all things is fulfilled. 
Thus He is called in Scripture the Alpha and 
the Omega, the first and the last, being iden- 
tified in the minds of Paul and John with 
the eternal wisdom or word of God. He is 
" made unto us wisdom and righteousness and 
sanctification and redemption." 

Here then is a practical meaning in the 
Apostle's words, which we can all understand, 
— that in making Christ, the Son of God, the 
central object of our faith, all other objects 
and aims in human life will be kept in their 



THE LAW OF CHRIST. 243 

true place, reflecting the mind and the wis- 
dom of God. And the converse of this truth 
is also meantj — that without Christ or the 
Christ-life as the object of our faith, human 
life will present a scene of confusion and dis- 
order. The key-stone being withdrawn, the 
arch tumbles into ruins. For there is nothing 
then to keep men together in peace and 
love; nothing among nations and j)eoples to 
restrain them from preying upon each other ; 
nothing in the selfish hearts of men, above 
the idols of earth, that appeal so easily to 
the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye 
and the pride of life. 

We have proof enough of this in history 
and in the world about us. Men and nations 
which yield only to the impulses of self-love 
and self-aggrandizement must always be at 
cross purposes with each other. Society is 
only held together by those restraints which 
are imposed by a love of justice, by a 
mutual regard for individual rights, by a 
moral sense aroused into indignation at the 
sight of injustice, by a feeling also of sym- 
pathy with undeserved suffering. These are 
the virtues and graces which the name of 



244 THE LAW OF CHRIST. 

Christ represents above all other names that 
the world has known. And when St. Paul 
says that in Him all things consist, he tells a 
truth which all our knowledge and experi- 
ence of the world confirms. In the minds of 
Christian people it is almost a truism, that 
when the headship of Christ shall be acknowl- 
edged, and the spirit of Christ shall prevail 
on earth, then the curse and misery of sin 
will disappear, and the promise of the new 
heavens and the new earth be fulfilled. 

But we are concerned with a kindred truth, 
more specific and more personal than this. 
If it be the wisdom and the purpose of God 
that all things shall stand together in Christ, 
then it is our wisdom to discern and to verify 
this relation. We shall see the folly of at- 
tempting anything apart from Him. The 
various pursuits of human life, with its mani- 
fold interests, activities, and pleasures, will be 
regulated and harmonized by fidelity to the 
ideal discerned in Him. The keystone kept 
in its place, the whole structure will remain 
entire. 

Nature abounds in things beautiful and use- 
ful for the sustenance and enjoyment of man ; 



THE LAW OF CHRIST. 245 

but there is a selfish use of these things, 
which brings a curse upon the earth. What 
are they but ministers to lust, degrading, 
brutalizing, when sought for no higher end 
than the indulgence of sense, or made only 
the means of heaping up treasures on earth ; 
when the law of Christ, which tells of a better 
treasure and a higher life than that of the 
body and of self, is forgotten ? How will 
you cure men effectually of their intemper- 
ance, by which the good things of earth are 
abused to their hurt, but by bringing them to 
subdue the will of the flesh to the will of the 
spirit ? How, but through the law of Chris- 
tian love, will you restrain the strong from 
oppressing the weak, or the rich from robbing 
the poor? 

It is indeed the law of nature that social 
disorders shall arise in the ceaseless struggle 
for existence. Under that law men will strive 
selfishly and exclusively for the prizes of 
wealth and power which the world has to 
offer. And the world's tribulation is sure to 
follow, — the hostility of class against class, 
the abuse of privilege, the insolence of power, 
the envy and resentment of its victims, with 



246 THE LAW OF CHRIST. 

the inevitable issue of violence and bloodshed. 
The remedy for these social disorders will be 
sought in a wise and just legislation. But this 
will not be had, nor will its laws be enforced, 
until a sense of justice shall prevail in the 
community, which has its inspiration in the 
Christian law of love, a kindly regard for 
the rights and interests of men as men, held 
together, by mutual ties and self-restraints, 
in one body. In this, the law of Christ, 
men rise above nature \ and human society, 
born again of the Spirit, enters upon its new 
life. 

This law of Christ is the vital principle in 
our own free institutions, in the fundamental 
law of the republic, in the charter also of 
English liberties, in the declaration of rights 
of the French people ; and they are the true 
statesmen, in these nations, who regard this 
principle in public affairs. In this consists 
the superior wisdom of the men of moral 
ideas, which they are ever seeking to em- 
body in the laws of the State and to introduce 
into its practical politics. They may some- 
times fail. They may err in judgment as to 
times and methods ; but the hope of the 



THE LAW OF CHRIST. 247 

nation is with them. It was said of the late 
M. Thiers, that "the two opposite poles of 
political effort in his long and busy life w^ere 
order and liberty^ both springing from an en- 
lightened sense of justice." Foremost among 
living statesmen stands the English Premier 
of to-day, who, whatever may have been his 
mistakes, has been guided by the polestar of 
a true Christian faith, — the desire that the 
great English people shall represent, not only 
by the Church, but by the spirit of British 
rule, the kingdom of Christ and of God in 
the world. The w^ant of an aim like this was 
the secret of the fall of both the first and the 
second empires of France. In dealing with 
all great interests, political, social, industrial, 
or economical, they will be found the wisest 
men whose counsels are guided by some di- 
vine standard of right, the latest product of 
an enlightened Christian conscience. 

The principle of which I am speaking will 
find its illustrations in every conceivable rela- 
tion which we sustain to the world about us 
If the spirit which the name of Christ repre- 
sents be not the regulating and restraining 
power in human desire and human activity. 



248 THE LAW OF CHRIST. 

then, sooner or later, disorder and disaster will 
follow ; not always overtaking the individuals 
themselves, — for they may disappear at any 
moment, before their schemes have matured, — 
but revealing at last the vanity of their aims. 
In the immense field of enterprise which our 
own country offers, the temptation is frequent 
to a grasping and unscrupulous avarice, which, 
however disguised, the popular sense of jus- 
tice does not hesitate to stigmatize as robbery. 
Whether it appear in the deceptive represen- 
tation of values, the corruption of legislatures, 
the " watering " of stocks, or the " wrecking " 
of railroads, the injustice is the source of in- 
evitable disaster, falling upon the innocent 
and credulous victims of the fraud, sometimes 
overtaking the perpetrators themselves, al- 
ways entailing loss, in one form or another, 
upon the community. 

The rule is the same in the minor affairs of 
business life. There is in all things a certain 
moral ideal, needful to direct them. Success, 
in the long run, will be found only by making 
every act to consist with that. Whatever the 
business may be, — the building of houses or 
the selling of goods, the treatment of his pa- 



THE LAW OF CHRIST. 249 

tients by the physician, the management of 
cases by the lawyer, the care of his parish 
by a clergyman, the work of the laboring- 
man for his employer or of the politician for 
his party, — in every form of activity there 
is a certain line of conduct that is consistent 
with the moral rectitude of a Christian man, 
and, as I hold, in agreement with the loftiest 
conception of Christian character. It may be 
difficult to follow this line, but never impos- 
sible. It may be attended sometimes with 
temporary loss to the individual, but never 
without a gain to society and to the soul 
itself, a thousand times greater. True, there 
are other than moral elements to be taken 
account of, in any proper estimate of earthly 
affairs ; bufc the key-stone in the arch, that 
binds the whole together, is the law of Christ 
in the conscience. 

I spoke to you, last Sunday, of the ideals of 
human life, of the archetype in the mind of 
God, after which everything in the natural 
w^orld is formed, and up to which the great 
Architect of all things is building, and the 
great Father of His children is leading them 
by His bounty. His providence, and His 



250 THE LAW OF CHRIST. 

grace. Christ is the end of the law for right- 
eousness to every one that beheveth. And 
when we so hve and act that this law shall 
be followed, then we are illustrating the truth 
of St. Paul's words, — that '' in Him all things 
consist." We are working with God toward 
the consummation of all things in heaven 
and earth. And whatever may come to us 
in this world, whether we abound or suffer 
want, whether we live or die, we are the 
Lord's, under the guiding care of an omnipo- 
tent Deity. Our fellowship) is with Christ 
and with God. There is a foundation of 
hope which none of the world's disorders, its 
doubts or its fears, can disturb ; for " the 
foundation of God standeth sure." 



XV. 

Cljnstian jfeJIotosljii). 



XV. 

CHEISTIAN FELLOWSHIP.! 

" Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the 
knovjledge of the Son of God, unto a ^perfect ')nan, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ:' — Eph. iv. 13. 

E. SPENCER, in his " Data of Eth- 
ics," makes the desire of pleasure 
the leading factor in the evolu- 
tion of the human species. Un- 
questionably this instinct of our 
nature is the first to manifest itself in the 
individual life, and is a constant force in its 
development. All the functions of a healthy 
body are pleasurable. The infant child, like 
the brutes about him, finds his pleasure in 
the food required for his sustenance and his 
growth ; in the activities, also, by which 
health is preserved and strength matured. 
Nor does this natural desire for pleasure 

1 1883. 




254 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 

very much abate through the years which 
follow. Man is ever striving after the condi- 
tions of life most favorable to happiness; and 
whether success or failure attend him in this, 
he is allured by the hope of a like estate in 
the future world. There can be no denying 
the constant presence of this motive in human 
action J and its controlling force in the onward 
movement of the world's civilization. It is 
the stimulus to industry, the spur of ambition, 
the incentive to discovery. Nothing useful, 
nothing great, would be done if men did not 
find their pleasure either in the doing of the 
thing itself or in the rewards that follow. 
The laborer toils for the wages that will give 
him bread, the support of his family, the en- 
joyment of his holiday. The capitalist in- 
vests his money in the enterprise that will 
yield him the largest profit. The artist 
reaches excellence when pleasure attends its 
pursuit and its achievement. The philan- 
thropist finds his joy in the work of benefi- 
cence in which he wears away his life. All 
are engaged together in the pursuit of a 
common object, — the pleasure that comes 
from gratified desire, — how various soever 



CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 255 

the methods employed, how widely differing 
the forms in which the object presents itself 
to the mind. For here it must be noticed 
that many of the so-called pleasures of life 
are denied for the sake of others. The heart 
that is set on riches will make a willing sur- 
render of many of the delights which wealth 
can purchase. Ambition eagerly encounters 
the toils and pains that minister to its object. 
The sacrifice of what most men count happi- 
ness itself is cheerfully made for the higher 
satisfaction which attends the discharge of 
duty. In the education of the race affections 
are developed which seek their gratification 
in ends beyond the sphere of self. Man is 
not the individual; isolated in his activities 
and his pleasures. He has his place in the 
family, in the tribe, in the nation. He recog- 
nizes gladly his relation to his fellows. For 
them and for the common weal he curbs his 
self-will and restrains his selfish desires. He 
submits himself to the law of the community ; 
he unites with others to enforce this law. 
A citizen of the Commonwealth, he is pledged 
to its interests, and abides by its fortunes. 
Hence the growth of virtue, public and pri- 



256 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 

vate. Justice and equity, mutual respect and 
helpfulness, prevail, and the blessings of peace 
and good- will are made secure to all. 

Thus man finds his true life in the fellow- 
ship of activity and interest, of privilege and 
destiny into which he is created. And in 
obedience alone to the law of this life does 
he find the highest pleasure of which his 
nature is capable ; for here through right 
relation to his fellow-men he comes into right 
relation w^ith God. God reveals Himself to 
us in the laws which govern the universe. 
Some of these relate to the material world 
and our temporary sojourn therein. It is no 
small part of the wisdom which comes from 
above to acquaint ourselves with these, and 
direct our life into the way of them. A still 
higher obedience, a knowledge more to be 
desired, is of those other laws which bind 
men to each other and regulate their conduct 
in society. How large a portion of the un- 
happiness of the world is due to the violation 
of these social laws, — men ignoring the tie 
of brotherhood, sympathy yielding to antip- 
athy, interest and passion and energy in 
perpetual conflict. Not a crime was ever 



CHRISTIAN FEILOWSHIP. 257 

committed, not a war has devastated the earth 
and desolated the hearts and homes of men, 
which did not originate in the ignorant or 
wilful disregard of man's relation to his fel- 
lows. And if in the future history of the 
Vforld a condition of human life shall be 
reached in which the minimum of pain and 
the maximum of happiness are found, it will 
come through the universal recognition of 
this law of human brotherhood. 

This account of human progress to which 
I have referred is not a mere theorizing. It 
has an indisputable basis of fact in the history 
of nations. And it is interesting to notice 
the confirmation which it brings to our Chris- 
tian faith. The truth educed by the latest 
and most careful induction of facts is identical 
with the truth declared by Jesus and taught 
by His Apostles. When Mr. Spencer tells us 
that in the evolution of our social life the 
highest pleasures are sought in the exercise 
of those affections which have reg:ard to oth- 
ers and to the common welfare, he utters the 
same truth which Jesus declared when He 
used that striking paradox of the Gospel, — 
" He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he 

17 



258 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 

that loseth his hfe for my sake shall find it." 
For the true life is never found in self alone, 
but only in fellowship with others, in mutual 
regard, in words and deeds of kindness, in 
acts of self-denial for the love of others, in 
stanch fidelity to the claims of duty to our 
fellows-men. One may find a temporary 
pleasure in the selfish disregard of this the 
true law of human life ; but the pleasure is at 
the best a despicable one, for w^hich the soul 
that is capable of anything higher will surely 
come to despise itself. And alas for the ag- 
gregate of human wretchedness which the 
love of self alone, defeating its own end, has 
brought into the world 1 How shall it be 
counteracted but in the exercise of those 
affections which regard the rights and the 
pleasures and the happiness of others, — the 
common interests, the common welfare of 
the family, the nation, the race, to which 
we belong ? 

And as we find our true life in this, so the 
abiding pleasure of life comes with it. Hence 
that other wise saying of Jesus, — " It is more 
blessed to give than to receive.'* Blessedness 
is the higher kind of happiness ; an impos- 



CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 259 

sible experience to the sordid soul, but well 
understood by those who delight in deeds of 
beneficence. Show me the man in any com- 
munity who is responsive to the claims of 
citizenship, ready to bear his part in the 
burden of life, active, spirited, and generous 
for the welfare of his fellows, faithful to his 
trust as a steward in the household of God ; 
and in the heart of that man there is a well- 
spring of joy flowing out to the world around 
him in perpetual streams of blessing. A 
blessed life indeed to himself and others was 
that of him whose name was but lately on 
every tongue, and never spoken but with 
gratitude and veneration, — the name of Peter 
Cooper. Nor will the friends and neighbors 
of that other good man, who has gone to his 
rest within the twelvemonth, fail in the cher- 
ished memory of the life that was spent in 
deeds of helpfulness to his fellow-men. No 
other monument than the one which he him- 
self erected in the hearts of those who knew 
him will be needed to commemorate the 
virtues of the late Francis G. Shaw. 

The heritage of blessing most precious to 
the world is the gift of that Divine life, in 



260 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP, 

the story of which we read the loving pur- 
pose of God for our humanity. Jesus came, 
to make men happy, shall I say ? ay, more 
than that, — to make men blessed. And He 
revealed in Himself the only method by 
which that heavenly benediction might come 
upon the world. He found His joy in living 
and dying, not for Himself, but for His fellow- 
men ; and He prayed that the secret of this 
joy might be imparted unto them. I need 
hardly say that to this end something more 
than the instinctive love of pleasure must be 
followed. The world knows too well that 
if only this be the governing motive in the 
soul of man, the life will be a sinful, because 
it is a selfish, one. But God has put into 
the heart of man something nobler than the 
love of pleasure which we have in com- 
mon with the brutes. He is educating the 
world by the experience of its follies and 
its sins. He is teaching men more and more 
the necessity of those restraints, and the 
value of those sacred ties through which the 
more tender sympathies and kindlier affec- 
tions of the human soul are evoked. Most 
of all by the mission of His Son, — distin- 



CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 261 

guished above His fellows as the Son of 
Man, because more than all others He has 
entered, as into the wants and sorrow^s, so 
also into the hopes and joys, of humanity, 
— by the mission and spirit of this divine 
manhood. He is bringing the sons of men 
to see that no man liveth to himself nor 
dieth to himself; that, living or dying, we 
are His, finding in Him our life \ and as in 
the unity of His Divine Spirit we are made 
one, even so in Him we are at one with 
God. 

The Christian Church in its true character 
and purpose is the realization of this, the 
mission of Christ on earth. The body of 
Christ, sharing through faith in Him in the 
life divine, its members are one, jointly par- 
taking of the gifts of the Spirit, and manifest- 
ing to the world the interests and sympathies 
and activities which are the legitimate fruits 
of the spirit of Christ. They are the true 
members of this body who are trying as best 
they can to make this conception real ; acting 
upon the truth that as God is the Father of 
all men, and Christ died for all, so all are 
entitled to share in the blessings, temporal 



262 CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 

and spiritual, which God has conferred upon 
the race. 

We cannot be too careful to keep this, the 
meaning of the Church of Christ, in mind. 
It is not a society to insure the soul against 
the pains and torments of another world. It 
is meant to be the pledge and earnest, nay, 
to be itself the dispenser, here of all the bless- 
ings which God would bestow. It is the fel- 
lowship of men as brethren. In communion 
with each other, sharing one with another in 
all good things, they are to find their pleas- 
ure, their happiness, their blessedness for 
time and eternity. If the Church does not 
bring men together in this way, helping them 
to see and feel their true relation to one 
another, and so seeking in the work of Christ 
their relation to God, then it signally fails of 
its purpose. If it remind us, in its worship 
and in the teaching it gives through its min- 
istry, that God is indeed the Father of all, 
who is above all and through all and in you 
all, that all may be joined together as one, 
then will its divine mission in the world be 
fulfilled. Then by a ministry apostolic in- 
deed, after the pattern of Him who came not 



CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP. 263 

to be ministered Tinto but to minister, will 
the body of Christ be edified, " till we all 
come in the unity of the faith, and of the 
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ." 



XVI. 

f t)e Cf)ri^ttan Oortrine of 



XYI. 

THE CHEISTIAN DOCTEINE OF 
PEOVIDENCE.i . 

^' Are not tivo sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one 
of them shall not fall 07i the ground vnthout your 
Father. But the very hairs of your head are all 
numheredP — St. Matt. x. 29, 30. 

OME years ago, one of the large 
steamers on Long Island Sound 
was wrecked in its passage to 
New York. The disaster was 
attended with great loss of life^. 
bringing sorrow and distress to many a house- 
hold throughout the land. It so happened 
that Mr. Daniel Webster, then at the zenith 
of his fame, had engaged passage on the same 
steamer ; but for some reason his journey 
was delayed, and thus he escaped the peril 
of shipwreck, and probably the loss of his life. 

1 1879. 




268 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE, 

There were many persons, at the time, who 
attributed this escape to a Providence which, 
foreseeing the disaster, was watching over the 
statesman's life with a special care, — that is, 
a care not extended to those who perished. 
By some suggestion of danger or other 
supernatural intervention, he was turned 
aside from his purpose ; and thus his valu- 
able life was continued a few years longer 
to his friends and his country. 

It might have been questioned by the 
sorrowing friends of those who were lost, 
why the same divine care could not also 
have been extended to them \ whether in 
such casualties God is a respecter of persons, 
sparing lives the most useful, and leaving the 
rest to their fate, or showing favor to one 
more than to another. The answer, I think, 
would be ready enough, among those who 
observe most closely the ways of Divine 
Providence, — that in times of danger, as 
well as in the ordinary movement of life 
around us, this partiality to individuals is not 
according to God's method. 

In the later shipwreck off the coast of 
Nova Scotia, the common sailors were the 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 269 

first to save themselves ; and among the pas- 
sengers, the bold and the hardy and the 
strong, who could clutch the ropes made fast 
to the shore most firmly, and resist the 
benumbing cold of a frosty night, — they 
alone survived ; — a survival of the fittest, 
indeed, but not according to the popular 
notion of special providences. Lives really 
more valuable, it may be, than any among 
the saved, were destroyed. The gallantry 
that rescued a subordinate officer was too 
late to keep the life in the form of beauty 
that was lashed in the rigging by his side. 
Men, women, and children, no less gifted 
than the few strong men among the saved, 
no less favored of fortune and of heaven 
hitherto, found their grave together on that 
rock-bound coast. 

And so we see that in the common mor- 
tality to which all men are subject, there 
is no distinction made, as by a particular care 
that reaches to one and not to another, under 
the same conditions. A great man, in time 
of danger, is no more the favorite of Heaven 
than his more humble neighbor. Each may 
come to his end by disease or accident. Each 



270 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

may die young, or in the prime of life, or in 
a good old age. It is not God's way to 
spare the most useful or the most renowned 
or the most lovely, and to remove the rest. 
The proverb " Whom the gods love, die 
young," runs to the contrary. And how 
often are we called to mourn the ^'untimely 
death," as we call it, of one whose years are 
full of hope and promise ! We sometimes 
think that God has a special love for the 
good and pious of His children, and that He 
will show that love in some particular provi- 
sion for their health and comfort and safety ; 
but we see, in fact, that they are quite as liable 
to disease and pain and death as any others. 

The belief, therefore, that God interposes 
in some special way for the protection of the 
useful or the good among His children, gov- 
erning the world by one set of laws for them 
and by another set of laws for all the rest, 
does not accord with the facts and realities 
of the world, as we observe them. 

Nor, indeed, does this notion of providence 
accord with the doctrine of Scripture, cer- 
tainly not with the teachings of Jesus ; for 
the providence of which He discourses is not 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 271 

confined to any particular class of persons, 
nor is it revealed alone in the protection of 
life against all possible injury. He tells of 
a God who is a Father to all His children, 
who provides food and clothing and shelter 
for them all ; denying not these necessary con- 
ditions of life to those who are ignorant of 
Himself, and show Him neither gratitude nor 
obedience. Nay, it is of a care beyond even 
this, that Jesus speaks, — a care for the birds 
of the air, a care that extends to every living 
thing created. Not a sparrow flieth in the 
air or falleth to the ground without His no- 
tice ; not a flower breathes out its fragrance 
or decks itself in beauty, and then, its brief 
life spent, fades and falls away, without the 
provision which He hath made for that life 
and for that death. It is of a providence, 
then, not special, as providing for the safety 
of one creature by a special intervention not 
made for the rest, but of an universal provi- 
dence, that we read, both in the written and 
the unwritten word of God, — a providence 
universal, and yet so particular and so mi- 
nute that no creature of God, animate or 
inanimate, is for an instant without His care. 



272 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE, 

For everything that is best for that creature 
a wise provision is made, so that nothing 
comes by chance, — nothing happens^ as we 
say, without His notice. All things are or- 
dered in the beginning, and controlled and 
directed to their end, by a wisdom that is in- 
finite, and — blessed be His name ! — by a 
love, too, that is infinite. 

And now let me ask you to observe that 
God's providence is to be seen not merely in 
the preservation of life and health to a few, 
singled out here and there, but it is to be 
seen also in the event of death, as it comes 
sooner or later to us all. It was a providence, 
you may say, by which Mr. Webster escaped 
his death by drowning. It was a providence, 
too, by which he came to his death a few years 
later. By the same providence the multi- 
tudes who sailed on that ill-fated steamer 
came to their death. It was a providence 
which saved the survivors in that other ship- 
wreck. Not the less was a providence to 
be seen in the loss of those who perished. 
All together had been committed to the care 
of the Almighty in the prayers of distant 
friends, and from none of those prayers had 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE, 273 

the ear of the Almighty been turned away. 
And so it was, when the last sad rites of 
our religion were solemnized over the re- 
mains of the departed, the recital of the 
same great truth was repeated : '- Forasmuch 
as it hath pleased Almighty God, in His wise 
providence, to take out of this world the soul 
of our deceased brother/' — words of a sub- 
lime faith in the Being who never forsakes 
His children, and never in life nor in death 
ceases for an instant His fatherly care. 

It is the wisdom of this providence, and 
the constancy of this loving care, that Jesus 
would commend to us, that our faith in God 
may be assured, and our trust may not 
waver, amid all the seeming good or seem- 
ing evil of this mortal existence. He would 
fortify this faith, not by directing our hopes 
to a possible miracle that God may work in 
our behalf at any time, not by evidences of 
a departure from the divine order of the 
universe or special interpositions for the 
safety of here and there an individual ; for 
all these are found to be delusive, when we 
come to examine them, and the ground only 
of a weak and credulous superstition, that af- 

18 



274 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

fords no support to the soul in the hour when 
support is most needed. Jesus would build 
our faith rather upon the unfailing tokens, 
within and around us at all times, of the wis- 
dom and goodness of God, the universality 
of His presence, the uniformity of His laws ; 
a Divine Spirit vitalizing, directing, and con- 
trolling the vast and complex machinery of 
creation ; a personal will, intelligent, irresis- 
tible, inflexible, yet unmistakably beneficent. 
To this being He gives the name of Father, 
with all that name imports in us of depen- 
dence, of subjection, of gratitude, of hope, 
and of love. He is a Being whom we mud 
obey, whose will, however resisted, sooner or 
later must be ours ; and the time will come 
when we shall be glad to make it ours, for 
we shall find it to be the only will that is 
wise and just and good for ourselves. 

"We may doubt this truth, as we often do 
in our hearts; for we are blind and igno- 
rant. We cannot see the end as God sees it ; 
and some things which He orders have a 
semblance of evil to ourselves. "We would 
escape them if we could ; we are loath to ac- 
cept them; we struggle against them with 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 275 

murmuring and repining, and sometimes with 
rebellion. It is to save us from the conse- 
quences of this short-sighted folly of ours, 
that the Divine Teacher speaks to us of 
the Father. Between Him and God there 
was peace ; for " I came/' He says, " not to 
do mine own will, but the will of my Father 
which is in Heaven." This peace, He tells 
us, may be ours on the simple acceptance of 
the will of God for ourselves ; in the trust 
that the good Father above, though at times 
He may hide Himself from our gaze, and 
may seem indifferent to the sorrows and 
sufferings of His children, turning away His 
ear from their agonizing prayer and leaving 
them to their cruel fate, — even as He seemed 
to have forsaken His beloved Son in the 
hour of His expiring agony, — has still but 
the one unchanging purpose of love to them 
all. 

The death of Jesus was a providence, — a 
precious boon of God to our humanity ; and 
all the sufferings and sorrows which He bare 
for us were provided, in the mysterious coun- 
sels of the Divine wisdom, for our salvation. 
Holy Scripture is full of this great truth, that 



276 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

we through patience and comfort might have 
hope. And so the kindred truth is there re- 
vealed, as it is indeed in the richest expe- 
rience of all believers, that tribulation is the 
appointed means of an entrance " more abun- 
dantly " into the kingdom of God. 

Creation itself hath been ordained conform- 
ably to this providence. The worlds are 
made to move only by forces which of ne- 
cessity are sometimes beheld in their destruc- 
tive violence. And whether is better, that 
the few should be spared the pain inflicted 
by contact with these forces, or that the uni- 
verse, with all its life-giving, life-preserving 
energies, should be sustained ? The same 
providence, then, which gives life and re- 
stores life and perfects life, must sometimes 
take it, to this very end. And so death is 
just as much a providence as birth, or the 
preservation of life. The natural dread of 
death, no doubt, arises from an instinct of 
self-preservation, which we have in com- 
mon Avith the brutes, although intensified by 
our superior imagination. But God has also 
given us a superior reason, by which death 
and its terrors may be overcome \ and it 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 277 

would seem that in every reflecting mind 
the evil of physical death could not be so 
great as to justify the ordinary fears of it. 
Certainly, when reason, exercising itself upon 
the things which we see in nature, and en- 
lightened by the teachings of science, is still 
further illumined by the inspirations of a 
Christian faith and hope, death will indeed 
be stript of its terrors, and be contemplated 
only in its providential relation to the welfare 
of ourselves and the human race. The wis- 
dom of God in its appointment will be vindi- 
cated ; and except it be hastened by our own 
folly and wilful disregard of the laws by 
which the life of the body is preserved and 
the life of the spirit developed, it will matter 
very little to ourselves whether death shall 
come a few years earlier or a few years later. 
It behooves us only to conform to the divine 
order, so far as it may be in our power, and 
to accept with humble trust and hope what- 
ever God shall be " pleased in His wise provi- 
dence" to apportion us. 

Only let us not forget the reality of that 
providence, whether in life or death. God is 
over us and for us at all times and in all 



278 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

things that befall us. As a dying boy once 
said to his mother, weeping at his bedside 
lest he should die unprepared: ^^ Don't be 
troubled, mother. I am in the hands of the 
good Father ; whatever He shall do with me 
is best, and I am content." 

When Jesus would teach the truth of this 
providence to His disciples, He did not tell 
them of a special care that would save them 
from death, in their fellowship with Him, but 
of a care which would attend them even in 
the hour of death. ^' Fear not them," He 
says, ''- which kill the body, but are not able 
to kill the soul ; but rather fear him which 
is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 
Fear nothing that shall befall you in the 
way of right and duty. Be afraid only of 
that which your conscience tells you is wrong. 
I have borne the cross, and shall bear it to 
the end, and ye shall bear it after me. But 
be not afraid. My Father and yoiu^ Father 
careth for us. Even the sparrows are pro- 
vided for, not only as they wing their joyous 
flight in the air above, but as they fall to the 
ground and die. Not one of them falleth to 
the ground without your Father. Fear ye 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 279 

not therefore, ye are of more value than 
many sparrows. The very hairs of your 
head are all numbered." Observe the illus- 
tration, drawn, as most of His illustrations are, 
from the world of nature, over which the 
same protecting care presides as over our 
humanity. We might think that He would 
show that care only in the power that sus- 
tains the sparrow in his glad and warbling 
life. But no ; they shall see it rather in 
the sparrow's fall, and learn from that, that 
they too, though stricken to the earth by 
sorrow, or drawing near to the grave with 
ebbing strength and failing heart, are not 
forsaken. God is still the strength of their 
heart, and their portion forever; and true 
it is — 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
And not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete ; — 

" That not a worm is cloven in vain; 
And not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire. 
Or but subserves another's gain.'' 



xvn. 



t[rt)e €i)xi^tun ^octxine of 




XYII. 

THE CHEISTIAN DOCTEINE OF 
PEOVIDEXCE.i 

'^ Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than 
many sparrows:^ — St. Matt. x. 31. 

N speaking to you, last Sunday, 
upon the Christian doctrine of 
providence, I endeavored to 
show you that in the common 
mortaUty to which all men are 
subject, by disease or accident, it is not God's 
method to distinguish between His children, 
as by a care that reaches to one and not to 
another, under the same conditions ; that 
there is a divine order in the universe, and 
a certain continuity in the operation of His 
laws, which He does not break in upon even 
for the protection of the righteous. He does 
not rule the world by one set of laws for 

1 1879. 



284 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

them and another set of laws for all the rest. 
I spoke of a providence, not partial, but uni- 
versal, and yet so particular and so minute 
that no creature of God, animate or inani- 
mate, is for an instant without His notice 
and without His care. 

There can be no doubt, I think, that this is 
the teaching of our Lord Himself, — that His 
disciples might believe in the Father, and in 
the reality of His overruling providence in 
all things that should befall them, whether 
in life or death. Without this faith the 
Christian's trust in God must be withdrawn, 
and the prayer of faith must cease to be 
offered. To the end that our own faith may 
be quickened, let us look still more closely 
at what we may call the divine method of 
providence. 

Thoughtful men have ceased to believe, in 
these days, that in times of danger or calam- 
ity God interposes to save human life by 
a miracle. Wonderful cures and hair-breadth 
escapes are often recorded, and it is a com- 
mon thing to speak of them as providential. 
There is a lingering belief, moreover, that 
in some way unknown to us they are duo 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 285 



directly to a divine agency, apart from what 
are known to be the laws of nature. But 
there are very few intelligent persons, even 
among those who hold to a religious faith 
and accept the miracles of Scripture, who will 
venture to affirm the fact of a miracle now. 
There is a suspicion of insincerity attaching 
to the recent efforts of the Romish priesthood 
in Europe to revive a decaying popular be- 
lief; and it is to the credit of a distin- 
guished archbishop that a similar attempt 
was promptly rebuked in Pennsylvania. Phe- 
nomena in the natural world, however re- 
markable, are connected in the minds of men 
with natural causes, and this, among the most 
intelligent Christians, without any loss of their 
faith in the reality of supernatural influences. 
They will not believe that God interposes a 
miracle to save them from danger, by sea or 
by land ; but they do believe that He will 
give them wisdom to escape it, and courage 
to meet it, with patience and submission to 
bear the ills which may attend it, and, best 
of all, the hope of blessing and salvation that 
shall follow, how disastrous soever may be 
the seeming issue. 



286 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

The other day, on the " Castleton " there 
were three hundred souls or more on board at 
the time of the collision.^ Only one was lost. 
That all the rest escaped was — a miracle, shall 
we say ? Yes, in the sense of being a wonder, 
as one would say in common s|)eech, but not 
in the Scripture sense of the word. Shall we 
call it a providence, then, for the which we 
ought to be grateful to Almighty God ? Most 
assuredly. But now observe the method of 
this providence. The course of the two ves- 
sels, when they came in sight of each other, 
was such that the striking of the " Castleton '^ 
amidships seemed inevitable. The loss of a 
second of time by the pilot, and one single 
turn less of the wheel, might have sent the 
" Spain " crashing through the hull of the 
ferry-boat, and a hundred souls more might 
have shared the fate of the lamented Carev. 
God works by means ; and the means He 
was pleased to use in that awful moment 
were the skill and the strong right arm of 
the pilot. His foresight of disaster, his 
prompt act in averting it, were ])rovided by 
Him who stands at the wheel of the uni- 

1 With the steamship " Spain," in the harbor of New York. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 287 

verse, by whose wisdom the worlds were 
made, and from whose might all life and 
power and activity, whether of body or of 
mind, are derived. 

Not long since the steamship " Arizona," in 
her passage across the sea, collided with an 
iceberg. The frightened passengers rushed 
upon deck, expecting soon to see the vessel 
sink and to find for themselves a watery 
grave. But the ship continued to float, and 
not a life was lost. Surely the escape was 
providential. But how ? The wisdom and 
skill of the builders of the ship had provided 
the means of safety in its construction. Other 
ships, by the like disaster, had been lost. 
Thousands had perished in the waves, and as 
they went down their last cry had reached 
no ear but God's ; and His arm, almighty 
though it were, was not stretched out to save. 
It was not His way to keep the ship afloat by 
a miracle. The dying prayer of those per- 
ishing multitudes should be answered by a 
method of His own, in keeping with His will 
as made known in law, — the law revealed 
alike in the properties of matter and in the 
will and intelligence, the memory and fore- 



288 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

sight, of man. Men should come to know 
better, as of danger, so of the means of escap- 
ing it. Experience of loss of property and 
of life should make them wise. Other ships 
should be built, better fitted to encounter the 
perils of the sea ; and through the loss of one 
life a thousand others should be saved. This 
is God's method of providence. It is one way 
by which He answers prayer. Not a life is 
lost (as not a sparrow falls to the ground) 
without your Father. The atheist does not 
believe this. He does not see the hand of 
God at all in nature, nor in the will and the 
w^ork of man. He contents himself with 
causes that are secondary, which he can see ; 
though he may know, if he will but think, 
that behind them all there is another cause 
with wdiich they can be and must be con- 
nected. But to the eye of faith God is visible 
everywhere. His way is in the sea, and His 
paths in the great waters. He is the God 
that doeth wonders. It is His frost that 
forms the iceberg, His power that floats the 
ship. His wisdom that builds it and guides 
it across the sea. Sometimes these forces of 
nature are seen in collision, and disaster fol- 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 289 

lows ; but never with any other result in the 
end than one of good, an increase in man of 
the knowledge of God's ways and his skill in 
adapting himself to then). 

The peril to human life from travel is vastly 
less now than it was a century ago. The 
facilities for passing from one part of the 
world to another have increased a hundred 
fold. The dangers have diminished propor- 
tionally. The chances are as a thousand to 
one that you may travel in civilized countries, 
by sea and by land, without danger. The 
unbeliever will tell you that nobody but man 
himself is to be thanked for all this. It is 
the Fultons, the Aikwrights, and the Watts, 
the Lairds and the Koaches, who deserve the 
credit ; or, rather, it is the civilization Avhich 
these men represent, that we must rejoice in ; 
and if we must needs find some expression 
for the religious sentiment that is born within 
us, it is enough that we worship humanity, 
and let that become the object of our adora- 
tion, our gratitude, and our love. Is there 
nothing greater, then, than humanity ? Will 
men satisfy themselves with the belief that 
there is nothing above, whence it came and 

19 



290 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

whither it is tending ? Or is it not more 
rational to adore, though we cannot compre- 
hend, the Power made known to man through 
nature and humanity, whose providence may 
be seen in the earth's bounty, in the tender 
care of the parent for the child, in the instinct 
of animals for the safety of their offspring, 
in the ever-increasing knowledge which adds 
to the safety and comfort and happiness of 
mankind, and, above all, in the benignity and 
charity with which human want is supplied 
and suffering mitigated and relieved, even at 
the cost of pain and death, to those who yield 
themselves to this ministry of blessing ? Is 
it irrational to believe in the being of One 
whence the knowledge and the love displayed 
in man and for man are derived ? Is it irra- 
tional to worship the God and Father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ? You will tell me there 
is evidence, beside, of the presence and power 
of evil in the world. True; but is not good 
forever overcoming it ? What else but this 
does the world's increase in knowledge mean, 
— its boasted progress in the arts of civil- 
ized life, its growing skill in the treatment 
of disease, its truer humanity, its enlarged 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 291 

sympathy with suffering, its resistance (ever 
becoming more effectual) to injustice and 
tyranny? If good, then, is overcoming evil, 
why not worship the eternal Goodness ? 
Why not believe that the world is ruled ^ 
by it? 

There is scarcity, with threatened want, in 
Ireland. Had the like occurred a few centu- 
ries ago, great suffering would have followed. 
Not a tithe of this will come to the people in 
the present year ; and why ? Because there 
is the ability and the disposition elsewhere to 
avert it. English wealth will be poured out, 
and American corn will be sent over in ship- 
loads to feed the famishing poor. These are 
acts of humanity, impossible in former days, 
but made easy now. It is God's providence 
abounding in one place to supply the needs 
of another. It is England paying the cost 
of misrule, willingly and kindly indeed, but 
justly, that the eyes of the people may be 
opened more fully to the needs of Ireland. 
It is America paying back in food the debt 
she owes for the thews and sinews and mus- 
cles of Irish laborers. It is God working in 
the hearts and wills of men to do His pleasure* 



292 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

Yes ; I see in the onward marcli of the world's 
progress — its commerce, its industry, its 
arts, and, above all, its philanthropy — the 
all-sufficient evidence of a presiding Intelli- 
gence and a ruling Will above. I am content 
to submit to that rule, and to be guided by 
that wisdom, as they are made known to my 
own feeble understanding. And in the firm 
belief that there is One by whose providence 
the events of earth — the rise and fall of em- 
pires, the deeds and fortunes and destinies of 
men — are directed, in this faith I rest. The 

only knowledge is to know the way of the 
Lord as He reveals it in nature and in the 

world's history; and the only wisdom is to 
walk in that way. This shall bring a man 
peace at the last. 

But the way, you will tell me again, is a 
thorny one, beset with cares and pains and 
griefs. Yes. There is a mother watching 
by the bedside of her child. She believes in 
a providence watching also from above ; and 
she prays that He who gave the life may ten- 
derly keep it from disease and danger and 
sin. And how is her prayer answered, and 
by what method is the providence which 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 293 

the mother invokes displayed ? Is she re- 
lieved from care and from toil and solicitude 
for her child ? No. Is the child exempt from 
every possible ill? No. By-and-by sickness 
comes, and the mother's care is redoubled ; 
her solicitude becomes anxiety. She does not 
sit idly by and fold her hands, waiting for a 
miracle. All her motherly love is called into 
action, and shows itself in deeds more than in 
tears. Like a ministering angel, which she is, 
she watches day and night by her loved one. 
And then the kind physician is called in, and 
the mother is cheered by his presence and 
guided by his counsel ; for he too, uniting as 
he often does a loving sympathy to his skill, 
is an angel sent of God, a messenger of heal- 
ing here on earth, whom the Divine wisdom 
h.di^ provided. And when all is done that the 
mother's care and the physician's skill can do, 
faith calmly awaits the issue. If life is spared 
and health restored, the heart is lifted up in 
gratitude. The Lord has been gracious, that 
the child might live. But it may be the 
answer to the prayer has been none other 
in form than it was to David's. The pain, 
the anguish, of bereavement follows. And 



294 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 

sliall faith, now in the hour of its greatest 
trial, be surrendered ? or will it still behold 
in death the hand of Him who hath done all 
things well? God provides death no less 
than life. And when the gift which He hath 
sent has been taken away, through no con- 
scious fault of our own, when we have done 
what we could to cherish it, then the Chris- 
tian believer will still look up to God in trust 
and hope. It is one of the afflicting provi- 
dences by which in His wisdom He is pleased 
to teach us of His way, and prepare us for 
the fuller life that is ours from Him. For 
God provides for us more than we need for 
our sustenance and our comfort here. There 
is, beside, the rich provision of His grace, by 
which He " forgiveth all our sins and healeth 
all our infirmities." And as there is not a 
sparrow that falleth to the ground without 
His notice, so there is not an event which 
bringeth joy or sorrow to our hearts that doth 
not take its place in the revolving cycle which 
owns Him for its centre and its moving power. 
In Him we live and move and have our 
being. From Him we came \ to Him we re- 
turn. As w^e depend for our existence upon 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE. 295 

His power, so we confide in His wisdom and 
His love for our salvation.^ 

* " All that awakes doubt and anguisli, all sorrow and care, 
all the limited interests of finitude, the religious spirit leaves 
behind on the sandbank of time. And as on the highest top 
of a mountain, removed from special views of the earth below, 
we peacefully overlook all the limitations of the landscape and 
the world, so, to the spiritual eye of man, in this pure region 
the hardness of immediate reality dissolves into a semblance, 
and its shadows, differences, and lights are softened to eternal 
peace by the beams of the spiritual sun." — He^el (quoted by 
Professor Caird). 



XVIIL 

Itostn0 Etfe to fintj it. 




XVIII. 

LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT.^ 

" Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down 
my life, that I might take it again.'''' — St. John x. 17. 

T is an interesting study to com- 
pare the words of wisdom in 
the book of Proverbs with the 
words of Jesus in the Gospel. 
In the former the motives to 
a good hfe are chiefly prudentiah The young 
man is exhorted to walk in the right way 
because '' the upright shall dwell in the land, 
. . . but the wicked shall be cut off from the 
earth." Length of days and peace shall be 
the reward of virtue. Favor and o;ood sue- 
cess in the sight of God and man are the 
attendants of the heart that '' keepeth mercy 
and truth.' ^ " The wise shall inherit glory ; 
but shame shall be the promotion of fools." 

1 1883. 



300 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

This promise to the life of wisdom is not 
altogether of temporal blessings. Wisdom 
is herself a possession more precious than the 
treasures of earth. Nevertheless the induce- 
ment to a life of wisdom is the hope of some 
gain to the soul itself, in which there is a 
very large ingredient of earthly good. 

There can be no doubt that this promise 
of wisdom is verified in human experience. 
The advantage every way, in the long run, 
is unquestionably with a life of virtue. Health 
and length of days will generally be found 
to attend it. It is by honest and lawful in- 
dustry, for the most part, that the riches of 
earth are accumulated ; and the enjoyment 
of them is greatest where the law of the Lord 
is not violated. There are, indeed, many seem- 
ing exceptions to this rule. But when we 
come to examine them closely they are more 
seeming than real. Power is sometimes 
wielded by injustice and prolonged by in- 
iquity; but sooner or later the judgments 
of God are sure to overthrow it. The witness 
of history at large is to an unseen power on 
the side of righteousness. Bad men are 
sometimes seen in possession of riches ac- 



LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 301 

quired by fraud and robbery of the neighbor 
by whose toil they have been gained from 
the earth. But wealth that is honestly ac- 
quired, and rationally, temperately, and kindly 
made use of, is the most secure, and yields 
to its possessor the largest return. 

The appeal, therefore, which Wisdom makes 
to prudential motives is sufficiently justified 
by experience. Nor is it an ignoble one, 
addressed as it is to the natural desires of 
men. There is a correspondence between 
these desires and the good things of earth 
which God has provided. The desire of gain 
and the love of pleasure are not unworthy 
incentives to action if kept within their right- 
ful limits. It is when they overleap the 
bounds of equity, and transgress the higher 
law of love to God and our neighbor, that 
they debase and corrupt the soul. Unhappily, 
the tendency to this transgression is universal. 
It seems to be the destiny of the human race 
that only through some sad experience of 
its own folly will it heed the lessons of Wis- 
dom. She must cry aloud, and her voice 
must be heard in the streets, proclaiming the 
truth that desire unrestrained defeats its own 



302 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

end J and brings a curse and not a blessing. 
She tells of the law of right, to which the 
natural desire of the heart shall yield for 
the sake of the very good which it seeks. 
^' What man is he that lusteth to live, and 
would fain see good days ? Keep thy tongue 
from evil, and thy lips that they speak no 
guile. Eschew evil, and do good ; seek peace, 
and pursue it." 

Thus it is that Wisdom comes down from 
her throne in the heavens, and addresses her- 
self even to the hopes and fears of our lower 
nature. But her high and holy office is not 
fulfilled by this her condescension to the 
things of earth. She has the further work of 
bringing the soul of man up to that higher 
plane of life in which it breathes the air 
of heaven, gifted from on high with desires 
that are heavenly, delighting in pleasures 
that know of no decay of earth, but are 
" forevermore at the right hand of God." 

And so it is that in the Psalms and the 
Proverbs and the Prophets of the Old Testa- 
ment we find the declaration of this further 
purpose of Divine wisdom, — intimations of 
an inner life of the soul, above and inde- 



LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 303 

pendent of the conditions of earth and time. 
Though its appeal is ever made to the desire 
of good, it is also made to an affection awak- 
ened by the Spirit of God ; to the conscious- 
ness of an inward and imperishable possession 
which no loss of earthly treasure, no denial 
of earthly pleasure, can impair. On the con- 
trary, this very deprivation of the natural life 
becomes the means whereby the heavenly 
life is perfected. The mouth of the lions 
shall be stopped. Envy and calumny shall 
not hurt the soul that is set on the thing that 
is right. The fire of persecution shall but 
reveal the presence of the Son of Man walk- 
ing with His fellows in the midst of the flame. 
Every form of seeming evil that touches not 
the heart, and turns not the will aside from 
the path of duty, leaves the soul unharmed, 
and is itself transformed to good. 

This revelation of Divine wisdom is indeed 
given in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
For this the Christ-life, the life eternal in the 
heavens, is there beheld by him whose eyes 
are opened by the Spirit of God. He sees 
it in the lives of the saints, — their obedience, 
their trials, their sufferings, their faithfulness 



304 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

unto death ; but he sees it now far more 
clearly through the manifestation of Christ 
in the Gospel. It is by the light which the 
truth as it is in Jesus has thrown back upon 
the sacred page of Hebrew Scripture that we 
read there the testimony which it bears to the 
higher and the truer life of Christ. In this 
light we interpret the word of Wisdom in all 
that is recorded of her utterances in ancient 
times. If she tell of length of days in her 
right hand, and of riches and honor in her 
left, she does not forget to remind us that 
the letter of this promise may not always be 
fulfilled to the good man ; that length of 
days and riches and honor may be denied to 
the righteous, for the very cause of the faith 
that is his, in the righteousness of God. Life 
itself shall be sacrificed on the altar of duty. 
" Lo, I come to do Thy will, God : I am 
content to do it; yea, Thy law is in my 
heart." And for this the Son of Man lays 
down His life. 

And so it is in this the life of God within, 
that the word of Wisdom is fulfilled,— "Length 
of days is in her right hand." Fulfilled., shall 
we say ? Shall we not rather say, contradided, 



LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT, 305 

in the recorded life of the Crucified One ? 
The days of Jesus were but few on the earth. 
They came to their end in shame and igno- 
miny and agonizing death. But the hfe that 
was His from the Father did not come to its 
end. Jesus lives, as at the right hand of 
God, in the spirit of every true believer. 
^^ Therefore doth my Father love me, because 
I lay down my life that I might take it again." 
The meaning of Jesus in these words is the 
same as in those other words to His disciples, 
" He that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it." He finds his own true life in the 
fellowship with Christ in the life divine. 

Here we have the substance of the Gospel 
teaching. And you see how very unlike it is 
in form to much of the teaching from the 
book of Proverbs. The promise of the Gospel 
is not of riches and honor and prosperity. It 
does not commend honesty because it is the 
best policy. It does not tell of a long life and 
a happy one here on earth, as the reward of 
virtue. On the contrary, it seems to hold 
such motives as these in very low esteem, 
as unworthy of the Christian name. It makes 
the very denial of earthly blessings conspicu- 

20 



306 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

ous in the Christian hfe, and points to this as 
the chief mark of the true disciple. " He that 
taketh not his cross and foUoweth after me 
is not worthy of me." 

The motive of the Gospel is rather the 
nobler one of a loving fellowship with Christ 
in the life divine that was His. Its appeal is 
to the heart of love, for the truth and right- 
eousness of God as revealed to faith in the 
person of His Son. ^^ Therefore doth my 
Father love me because I lay down my life 
that I might take it again." Jesus tells the 
reason of His Father's love. It was not that 
He went about doing good, hoping for some 
return to Himself. It was not that He was 
kind and loving to His fellow-men that they 
might be the same to Him. The return that 
He met with for the good which He did was 
almost wholly of evil, as men count evil in 
the world. In the face of the world's ingrati- 
tude He continued the work which his Father 
gave Him to do, until it was ended on the 
cross. And for this the Father loved Him. 
For the life of Jesus was the ideal life of our 
humanity, exalted far above the ordinary 
and the selfish life of mortals j above the vir- 



LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 307 

tue that looks for its support to the promise 
of some earthly good. 

And Jesus commended this life to His disci- 
ples because it was lovely in the sight of God, 
— lovely indeed in itself, even as God is love. 
^' If ye love them which love you, what thank 
have ye ? for sinners also love those that 
love them. And if ye do good to them which 
do good to you, what thank have ye ? for 
sinners also do even the same. But love ye 
your enemies, and do good, hoping for noth- 
ing again; and your reward shall be great, 
and ye shall be the children of the Highest : 
for He is kind unto the unthankful and to 
the evil." 

These, indeed, are hard sayings of the Mas- 
ter ; not hard to be understood, but hard to 
be followed, because they encounter the self- 
ish impulses and desires of our lower nature. 
^* They require,' it is sometimes said, " a 
perfection that is impossible." It is unhap- 
pily true that very few are found to follow 
closely in the footsteps of the Master. The 
cross that He puts upon His disciples is some- 
times a heavy one, and men are weary in 
bearing it. But it is not impossible to cherish 



308 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

the spirit of the Master ; to keep in our 
mind's eye the thought of the true life which 
He has given us ; to make it the sincere pur- 
pose of the heart to pursue it. '^ Not as 
though I had abeady attained, either were 
already perfect ; but I follow after, if that I 
may apprehend that for which also I am ap- 
prehended of Christ Jesus." 

The secret of all that is best and noblest in 
human life is this love for a virtue that is 
lifted above any considerations of gain or loss 
to ourselves. This love is the soul of all true 
patriotism. To live, to toil, to die, for one's 
country has been esteemed a beautiful thing 
in the sight of men. The page of history is 
illumined by the self-sacrifice of heroes who 
have counted something dearer than life in 
their country's good. 

The same love, that seeketh not its own, 
but the things of others, is the soul of philan- 
thropy. Nay, it is the very salt of the earth, 
which alone will save the nation and the race 
from corruption. For there is nothing else 
to counteract the lusts for gain and pleasure 
and power that war in men's souls. Un- 
doubtedly the appeal is made to the hopes 



LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 309 

and fears of men in respect of what may be- 
fall individuals and nations on the earth. All 
that the Bible promises of reward, all its 
threatenings of judgment, are true. They 
are enough to startle the sinning soul in its 
imagined security. They are an incentive 
and stimulus to well-doing. But they are 
not enough in themselves to make men true 
to tlie stern behests of duty. They are not 
enough to resist the might of many a strong 
temptation; not enough to make the soal of 
man valiant and patient and hopeful in its 
warfare against the powers of evil ; not 
enough to lift it to the exalted height of 
honor and of glory which God has destined 
for our humanity. 

For this there is needed, beside, the revela- 
tion of the Divine will and the Divine love in 
Christ. The world had need to see the object 
of that love on the stage of human history ; 
to listen to the winning accents of that voice 
divine, to gaze upon the closing scenes of that 
awful tragedy. 

And beside all this, there is needed for the 
soul itself the faith that shall meet the ap- 
proach of a love so divine with the return of 



310 LOSING LIFE TO FIND IT. 

the heart's best affection, — the faith that shall 
melt the selfish heart into sympathy with the 
loving purpose of Jesus for a sinning world, 
and, overcoming the resistance of an unruly 
will, accept for itself the dying declaration 
of His obedience, " Nevertheless, not as I will, 
but as Thou wilt.'' 



XIX. 

Is Etfe iDortl) Eibin^f? 




XIX. 

IS LIFE WOETH LIVING ?i 

" For Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through Thy 
works ; and I will rejoice in giving praise for the 
operations of Thy hands J^ — Psalm xcii. 4. 

S Life worth Living ? " Such is 
the title of a volume lately 
published in the interests of 
the Christian faith. It might 
seem an idle waste of time to 
consider, even for a moment, a question 
which finds its answer in the instinctive 
love of life common to the human race ; 
while to one who holds that life is the gift 
of God, the question itself were hardly less 
than an insult to the Giver. 

Yet the truth must be owned of a feeling 
stronger even than the instinct of self-preser- 
vation, often followed by the wish that the 

1 1880. 



314 /S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

gift of life might be taken away, and some- 
times issuing in the act of self-destruction ; 
and there are not wanting those who justify 
the crime of suicide as the most rational 
mode of terminating an existence which, as 
they affirm, has more pains than pleasures, 
and is bereft of the hopes which are the sup- 
port and stimulus of effort in the struggle 
so necessary to maintain it. 

We may not forget the saying of St. Paul 
which tells so mournfully of the trials by 
which the faith of his times was tested, — 
that " if in this life only we have hope, we 
are of all men most miserable." This and 
other kindred sayings, which tell of the suf- 
ferings of believers in fellowship with the 
Crucified One, would give some color of 
truth to the charge that the dogmatic teach- 
ing of Christianity in respect of this life is 
pessimistic.^ It is however, I believe, an 
altogether mistaken view of the experience 
of believers like St. Paul, that by any teach- 
ing of theirs the necessary condition of hu- 
man life is one in which evil, both moral and 
physical, is, and will continue to be, dominant. 

^ Goldwin Smith. 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 315 

The miseries to which the Apostle referred 
were chiefly those attendant upon times of 
persecution. But both the Master and the 
disciple looked forward to a time in which 
the kingdom of God should prevail^ and its 
blessings be extended throughout the world. 
It was the promise of Jesus, too, signally veri- 
fied in the present life of many a sainted 
follower, that joy should attend him in his 
sorrows, and in the midst of his tribulations 
he should find peace. 

The religion of Christ does indeed take 
cognizance of the presence and power of evil 
in the world ; but it affirms, beside, the pres- 
ence of a mightier power of good for its over- 
throw. While it postpones the ultimate issue 
of the conflict between the two to a future 
state, it cheers the believer by many an omen 
of victory. It has a ready answer to the 
inquiry of every doubting soul; for it tells 
alike of the God who gave, and of the God 
who keeps, yea, and of the God who redeems 
from all evil the life which is His. 

Herein it makes no denial of anything 
which is palpably true. It has no disguises 
by which it hides from view the sad fatalities 



316 /S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

of nature, and the still more hideous features 
of moral deformity. It looks upon the life 
which now is, not under the rosy tints in 
which the youthful imagination is wont to 
picture it, but in the light of undeniable 
facts; and it boldly challenges the scrutiny 
of these, for the proofs upon which it rests 
its claim to the faith of mankind. 

If it could be made to appear, by any just 
comparison of the good things which attend 
this life with the evil things which are inevi- 
table, that the former are, and must be, over- 
weighted by the latter, then, in the prospect 
of a hopeless struggle, faith in a good God, 
I believe, would not long survive ; and along 
with it belief in a future state would also per- 
ish. I am well aware that such a disproportion 
is thought to exist. There are those who, 
in looking constantly upon the darker side 
of human life, have contracted their mental 
vision to the shutting out of the light in 
which its more gladsome realities are beheld. 
The mole which burrows underground is 
pained by the light which* sparkles in the 
dew-drop and tints with beauteous color 
the flowers above his head. It is said that 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 317 

the fishes found in those cavernous pools 
to v^^hich the simhght has never penetrated 
have eyes that are only rudimentary, with- 
out the sense of sight. The birds which fly 
only in the night cannot look, as does the 
eagle, upon the sun. In like manner, the 
mental vision may be impaired by the habit 
of dwelling upon the miseries and vices of 
mankind. It is related of Carlyle, that one 
evening, after he had indulged for a time in 
one of his gloomy tirades against the follies 
and vices of men, the poet Leigh Hunt, who 
had taken a cheerier view of life, looked up 
at the stars, that were shining brightly over- 
head, and exclaimed, " Is not that a glorious 
sight ? " " Sad ! — very sad 1 " was the answer 
of Carlyle. Unhappily for themselves, there 
are many who do not look up at the stars, 

" Forever singing, as they shine, 

' The Hand that made us is divine.' " 

Familiarity with the vices of men sometimes 
weakens our faith in human virtue. Con- 
stant apprehension of trouble, which often 
attends the misfortunes of men, will of neces- 
sity affect their estimate of the value of life. 
" Few and evil are the days of the years of 



318 /-S- LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

my pilgrimage/' was the saying of Jacob, in 
the remembrance of the more sorrowful scenes 
in his own career, and for the moment forget- 
ful of the blessings of a gracious Providence. 

There have been times also, and there are 
countries even now, in which the average 
sum of human happiness is much lower than 
it is known to be under the more favorable 
conditions of life which prevail elsewhere and 
in other times. The Nihilist of Russia, im- 
patient under the iron rule of despotism or 
wasting away in Siberian exile, will form a dif- 
ferent estimate of life from the American citi- 
zen, rejoicing in the freedom and prosperity 
of his native land. There is truth, indeed, in 
the gloomy picture which Hume has drawn : 
" Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into 
this world, I would show him, as a speci- 
men of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a 
prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, 
a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet 
foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing 
under tyranny, famine, or pestilence." But, 
true as this picture is to some of the darker 
phases of human life, it is not a just repre- 
sentation of that life, as we see it now for 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 319 

the most part around us. Evil passions are 
slumbering in the breasts of all men. Is it a 
perpetual outbreak of these passions that we 
witness ? Are there no deeds of kindness to 
be seen, no words of sympathy and love to 
be heard in our midst ? There are hospitals 
in which sickness and death are inmates. 
Are they not also visited by the eye of 
pity ? Is there no hand to minister to their 
wants and alleviate their pains? And are 
there no homes beside, in which comfort and 
peace and health and happiness are seen to 
reign ? Count up your mercies, and tell me 
if they are outnumbered by the ills which 
afflict you. There are prisons in which bad 
men are confined. Is it no boon to humanity 
that they are confined ? There are bad men 
who escape punishment. Is the mass of our 
population made up of malefactors ? There 
are busy hands and active brains in the mul- 
tiplied industries of our land. Is labor every- 
where, or for the most part, a curse, and not 
a blessing ? It is not true, as Hume declares, 
that " all the goods of life would not make a 
very happy man." Surely the aggregate of 
happiness, in this country at least, is vastly 



320 /-S* LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

greater than the aggregate of misery. So it 
may be throughout the world, as indeed it 
will be, when the faith and the life which we 
call Christian shall prevail.^ 

Preaching to the idolaters of Lystra, St. 
Paul appeals to the evidence before their 
eyes of the God which made the heavens 
and the earth and the sea, and all things 
that are therein. And then, as if the evi- 
dence were overwhelmingly on the side of 
His beneficence, even to the nations whom 
He suffered to walk in their own ways, and 
to multiply, by their sins, the proofs of a 
power of evil counteracting His goodness, he 
adds : " Nevertheless He left not Himself 
without witness, in that He did good, and 
gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, 
filling our hearts with food and gladness." 

Nor is the testimony which Nature gives 

1 " A sublime confidence is fed at the bottom of the heart, 
that, in spite of appearances, in spite of malignity and blind 
self-interest, an eternal beneficent necessity is always bring- 
ing things right; and though we should fold our arms, which 
we cannot do, — for our duty requires that we should be the 
very hands of this guiding sentiment and work in the pres- 
ent moment, — the evils we suffer will at last end them- 
selves, through the incessant opposition of nature to everything 
hurtful." — Emerson. 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 321 

to the goodness of its divine Author contra- 
dicted, even bj the aggregate of human suf- 
fering, which inevitably attends the more 
violent display of her forces ; for this bears 
but a small proportion to the aggregate of 
blessing which comes through the established 
order of things. There is some loss of life 
by earthquakes and tornadoes. I think sta- 
tistics will show that the average loss, from 
year to year, by lightning is still greater. 
Yet how trivial is this loss, compared with 
the security which human life enjoys under 
the ordinary conditions of nature ; and how 
little is it taken into the account even in the 
regions most exposed to it! The disaster is 
soon repaired, and forgotten. The dread of 
it passes away, and generations come and go 
before its recurrence. Pompeii and Hercu- 
laneum were destroyed nearly two thousand 
years ago. Vesuvius has been smoking and 
erupting ever since, but with little danger 
to either life or property ; and now Science 
lends her voice to the witness of Nature. The 
superstitious fears which once beheld in these 
disasters the proofs of infernal pov/ers hostile 
to man are fast vanishing away, and even 

21 



322 /^ LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

the violence of nature discovers to the mind 
of man the constant and all-pervading pres- 
ence of invisible powers which may be turned 
to his advantage. 

In the gallery of the Luxembourg, there is 
a figure cut in marble, under which appear 
the words, " To seem and to be." The figure 
is that of a woman holding in her hands a 
mask. The features of the mask are wreathed 
in smiles, telling only of mirth and gladness. 
But the face of the woman herself wears a 
look of anguish. This, the artist would tell 
us, is the woman as she is. The mask is the 
woman as she appears. Most truly has the 
artist told of the double self, not seldom 
known, amid the conventionalities of social 
life. In many a household there are troubles 
wisely kept from the eye of the world. The 
'^skeleton in the closet" has passed into a 
proverb ; telling the same truth which the 
wise man uttered many years ago, — " The 
heart knoweth its own bitterness." Indeed, 
there is a sacredness in grief which would 
guard it from the gaze of the multitude, as 
from a kind of profanation. In the rude 
contact of the world it often masks itself 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 323 

in cheerfulness ; and the mask is wiUingly 
dropped only in the presence of a trusted 
love. 

I cannot believe, however, that the good 
God would have us think that with any of 
His children the cheerful look is one that is 
only to be assumed, speaking not of a heart 
that may be glad within. If the artist meant 
that his figure should tell us this, then his 
art is false. The bright and cheery side of our 
existence here is not a seeming, but a real- 
ity ; the poet sings as truly of its " L' Allegro" 
as of its " II Penseroso." Nay, it is the rev- 
elation of the good God and Father that 
the life which He bestows should be indeed 
the good thing that we may cherish, and 
in the possession of which we may be happy. 
To this end are the very opposites which He 
ordains, its pains and its pleasures, its sorrows 
and its joys. But for the pains which attend 
its loss, or its privations, we would not cherish 
the gift itself; much less could we reach the 
higher development of which the life is capa- 
ble, without the discipline which involves an 
unwelcome and often painful denial of the 
lower self. 



324 J'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

The truth is, nature is made up of oppo- 
sites. Light and darkness, clouds and sun- 
shine, heat and cold, life and death, — these 
are the counterparts of each other, the ne- 
cessary conditions of finite existence. We 
cannot imagine a material world without 
them. Let one who doubts the wisdom of 
such a constitution of things attempt to 
frame in his own mind a better; or let him 
who questions its beneficence conceive, if he 
can, a state of things in which the pleasures 
of this present life can be apportioned without 
their alternate pains. To this constitution of 
things, then, in external nature, the nature 
of man himself is wisely and beneficently 
adapted. His life, too, must be made up of 
opposites; the lights and the shadows must 
ever appear together in the picture of human 
life. What were any picture without light 
and shade ? Each beautiful color is some 
modification of pure light, and for its highest 
effect depends upon some approach toward 
darkness. The pleasure which the sunshine 
gives would disappear if the sunshine were 
perpetual. To us mortals the coming on of 
night is a grateful relief from the glare of 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 325 

the mid-day sun ; and night brings repose, and 
rest from the labors of the day, and sleep, 
too, which is the image of death. Who shall 
say that the sleep of death is not sweet to 
him who has walked as in the light, and 
wisely borne his part in the activities of the 
day? 

I have spoken of a religious faith as one 
factor in the problem of human life before 
us; for the social state which this faith has 
confessedly sought and partially reached is a 
fact that must take its place among other 
facts in any attempt to solve that problem. 
The optimist, who takes no note of the facts 
of sin and human depravity, is without the 
necessary data for a true estimate of life ; so 
also is the pessimist, who makes no account 
of the realities of the Christian faith and the 
Christian life, especially of the charity which, 
ever active in deeds of goodness, beareth 
all things, believe th all things, hopeth all 
things. It will not do to decry the Chris- 
tian faith as an idle superstition, however 
largely that element may have entered into 
it at any given time. A true Christian 
faith has long existed in the world, oppos- 



326 /-S- LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

ing its beneficence to the power of evil, miti- 
gating the ills of life, and meeting them, where 
they were inevitable, with courage and pa- 
tience and hope. No one can say that the 
ethics of Christianity have been inoperative 
in shaping the laws and usages of civilized 
society ; and that the precept of love to our 
neighbor, enforced by the faith that God is 
love, has had no effect in hastening the time 
when all men shall be protected alike in the 
pursuit of happiness. 

In what Christianity has done, we have 
the earnest of what it may do in the future, 
in co-operation with the ever-increasing light 
of knowledge. We are justified, therefore, in 
looking upon many of the evils which now 
afflict the human race as only temporary. 
Not more certainly does the earth give proof 
of an uninterrupted process of creative energy, 
than does history bear witness to a mental 
and moral evolution, in which the Christian 
faith has been one of the leading agencies. 
It is in the light, then, of the gospel of Christ 
that we are to look at human life, and the 
part which we ourselves bear in that life. 
The gospel brings to us good news of God 



IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 327 

and of His purpose, good news of man and 
of his work and destiny. " The people that 
sat in darkness saw great light : and to them 
which sat in the region and shadow of death 
light is sprung up." 

To him who holds this faith aright, the out- 
look upon the world may always be a hopeful 
one, both for himself and the race to which 
he belongs. He is no longer the subject of 
his own varying moods, nor yet dismayed by 
the chances and changes that may befall him. 
Clouds and thick darkness may be about him ; 
but the sun is above and beyond them all. 
For in the work of Jesus here on earth, and 
in the risen life of Jesus among men, the 
mystery of life is solved. We are here in- 
deed subject for a time unto vanity, that we 
may know the folly of all selfish ambitions, 
and hopes that are only earthly ; but we are 
also given to know that our labor in the 
Lord is not in vain. In this we find our 
consolation and our hope. 

It is upon this brighter side of human 
life that we may accustom ourselves to 
look. We see by faith whither all things 
are tending. Step by step we are led upward 



328 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

in tlie scale of being. By patient toil, and 
suffering, the race has been slowly emerging 
from a state of barbarism to a civilization 
whose blessings we now enjoy. Not without 
the sacrifice of life has the life of to-day been 
made more secure ; but humanity is ennobled 
by the sacrifice, and the page of history is 
emblazoned with its deeds of heroism. The 
law of growth is stamped upon creation, and 
humanity bears upon itself the seal and pledge 
of an endless progression. Blind indeed the 
eye which cannot read in both the tokens of 
an infinite Power, beneficent and wise ; and 
cold the heart that cannot respond with the 
Psalmist : '' For Thou, Lord, hast made me 
glad through Thy works ; and I will rejoice 
in giving praise for the operation of Thy 
hands." 



XX. 



XX. 

THE WAY CALLED HEEESY.^ 

" But this I confess wito thee, that after the way which 
they call heresy so worship I the God of my father Sy 
believing all things which are written in the law 
and in the jprophetsP — Acts xxiv. 14. 

E have here a confession of heresy 
and an affirmation of orthodoxy. 
How the two could be recon- 
ciled the enemies of Paul w^ere 
quite unable to see. Bigotry 
is always blind ; it can never penetrate to 
the heart even of the truths which it pro- 
fesses to hold. This, the vision of faith, was 
given to the Apostle Paul. The body of 
religious truth contained in the law and the 
prophets he believed ; here he was ortho- 
dox. The false theology by which the law 
was nullified, and the formalism in which it 
was congealed, he rejected ; for this he was 

1 1883. 




332 THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 

charged with heresy. To this charge he 
pleads guilty. He is willing to he condemned 
for the crime which had cost Jesus His hfe ; 
only he wishes it to be understood that he 
still holds fast to the religion of his fathers. 
He worships the God of Abraham ; the right- 
eousness that was his by faith, shall be his 
own. Christ is to him the end of the law 
for righteousness, as to every one that believ- 
eth. His heresy is but the more perfect way 
of God which Jesus had taught before him. 

It is interesting to see how Paul values 
the continuity of religious faith and worship. 
He does not like to break with the past nor 
to separate himself from his brethren. He is 
no schismatic. He will conform, so far as his 
conscience allows him, to the rehgious cus- 
toms and ritual of his people. He is strongly 
conservative in habit and temperament. He 
reverences the wisdom of the ages. In Rome, 
when his countrymen came to hear him con- 
cerning the new sect that was everywhere 
spoken against, he tries to commend the 
Christian faith by an appeal to their own 
Scriptures. And yet his method of interpret- 
ing Scripture, like that of Jesus, was entirely 



THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 333 

different from the one wliicli was current 
among the religious teachers of his time. 
^^ Whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you, do ye even so to them : for this is 
the law and the prophets." So Jesus read 
the Scriptures. And Paul says that " he who 
loveth another hath fulfilled the law." The 
heresy-hunting priests w^io put Jesus to death 
did not read the law of Moses in that way. 
They found a number of sayings in Scripture 
which contradicted these novelties of the 
Nazarene.^ Then there were doctrines and 
traditions, forming a kind of systematic the- 
ology, by which the truth of religion was 
obscured and the law of God made of none 
effect. Add to this a vain reliance upon 
external rites and ceremonies, and you have 
the causes of a spiritual blindness which had 
fallen upon Israel after the flesh. 

It is the labor of Paul in his epistles to 
open these blind eyes, to pierce through the 
thick wrappings in which the word of truth 
had been stifled, to redeem the soul from its 
bondage to vain traditions. This was his 
heresy j as it has been the heresy of many 

1 St. Matt. V. 38, 43. 



334 THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 

a godly man since his time, who has distin- 
guished between religion and theology, be- 
tween the letter and the spirit, between the 
substance of religious truth and the prevailing 
forms in which it has been embodied. 

Of necessity religious belief must find some 
outward expression in doctrine and in wor- 
ship. This expression is the attempt on the 
part of man, always imperfect, to represent 
his thought and his affection toward the object 
of his religious faith. It serves its purpose 
for a time, until, with a fuller knowledge and 
under a better spiritual culture, a changed 
conception of the object of religious faith is 
reached. The world's history affords many 
illustrations of this change, showing the va- 
rious stages of belief and worship through 
which a people emerging from barbarism to 
a more civilized state will pass. Each stage 
will have its peculiar theological ideas, — its 
notions of God, and how He is to be ap- 
23roached, — notions of providence, of sacrifice 
and propitiation, of judgment and retribution, 
of rewards and punishments. To a great ex- 
tent these are matters of religious opinion. 
Some element of permanent truth there will 



THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 335 

be in all of them ; but they will all be subject 
to a continual flux and progression, through 
the increasing light of knowledge, and the wis- 
dom of experience, especially as this increase 
comes to the more gifted minds among the peo- 
ple, — the poets, the seers, and the prophets, 
who appear from time to time as the leaders 
in this onward movement of religious life. 

There is no history that illustrates this 
movement so well as that of the Hebrew 
nation in the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment, from Abraham to Jesus. And herein, 
I think, consists the chief value of these writ- 
ings to us. They show us how the germ of 
religious truth was gradually developed and 
unfolded until its rich verdure and golden 
fruitage appeared in the spiritual teaching 
of Christianity. The growth was not a rapid, 
nor an uninterrupted one. It encountered 
many obstacles in the spiritual blindness and 
stupidity of the people, in the corrupting in- 
fluence of surrounding nations, in the natural 
selfishness of the human heart, in the resist- 
ance of a priestly caste, jealous of prophetic 
influence, and interested most of all in main- 
taining its power over the people. But all 



836 THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 

this resistance, which found its crowning ex- 
pression in the crucifixion of Jesus, only served 
to purify and vitalize the truth itself, and to 
plant it more deeply in the hearts of men. 

In this history the person of Abraham is 
made to stand before us as the father of the 
faithful. We Christians are taught to trace 
our spiritual ancestry back to him, through 
a period of nearly four thousand years. The 
distinguishing feature of Abraham's religious 
faith, which separates him from his kindred 
and people, is the worship of an unseen 
Power which gives to a righteous life the 
promise of blessing. The promise is to him 
and to his righteous seed forever. His con- 
ception of this Power is crude and obscure ; 
for he has passed from the gross darkness 
about him only into the twilight that heralds 
the dawn of the coming day. His thoughts 
are of possessions that are temporal^ and of 
a progeny that shall inherit them. The prom- 
ised blessing shall have its counterpart in the 
curse that shall come upon his enemies. Still, 
the guiding truth in the life and worship 
which follow is of a righteous God and of a 
perfect way before Him. 



THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 337 

This truth Abraham transmits to his de- 
scendants, and along with it an outward sign, 
to be observed by them, which shall remind 
them of it no less than of the promised bless- 
ing which they shall inherit. This sign of 
circumcision is the seal of the covenant, in 
which the pledge of Divine favor is attended 
by the promise of obedience to the law of 
right, made known to the conscience. 

The faith and the worship thus distin- 
guished are continued through the genera- 
tions that follow until a great prophet and 
lawgiver arises in Israel. And now, in the 
completer system of doctrine and worship of 
the Mosaic law, a step onward is taken. The 
right way is defined by certain precepts. 
The people are brought more and more into 
the light that shines out from the mount of 
God, revealing the perfect way of life. Is it 
strange that this revelation shoald come but 
imperfectly to the multitude, — that the clear 
crystal of divine truth should be incrusted 
with the deposit of many an error from the 
ignorance and infirmity of men, both priests 
and people? 

The time was sure to come w^hen the prom- 

22 



838 THE WAY CALLED HERESY, 

ised blessing should be claimed by those 
whose only relation to Abraham was that of 
a carnal descent. An Israel after the flesh 
should arise, forgetful of the righteousness 
that Cometh by faith in a righteous God ; and 
religious teachers, too, who should make the 
outward sign of the covenant of more account 
than the obedient spirit which it signified. 
The law should be kept by those who ob- 
served most closely its mandates for an out- 
ward worship. The moral should be overlaid 
by the ceremonial. Judgment, mercy, and 
truth should be forgotten in the tithing of 
mint and anise and cummin. The promised 
blessing to the Gentile world should come 
only to those who conformed to the customs 
and ritual of the Jewish Church. 

Such was the religious state of the people 
of Israel, and such the teaching of the priests 
and scribes in the time of Jesus, notwith- 
standing the earnest protest of good and holy 
men, the prophets, whom the Lord had sent 
unto Israel, and whose testimony, though re- 
corded in their own scriptures, they had fal- 
sified and rejected. We all know how the 
truth as it is in Jesus was also rejected. 



THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 339 

Now the heresy of Paul was shnply the 
outspeaking of this truth, proclaiming every- 
where to Jew and Gentile that the promised 
blessing which came through Abraham could 
be shared by every soul who believed, as he 
did, in a righteous God, and gave proof, as he 
did, of his faith in a righteous life. This faith 
was of necessity a belief in the Supreme 
Goodness, which had for its end the welfare 
and blessing of mankind. It involved a kin- 
dred spirit of goodness in the believer himself, 
which identifies itself in word and deed with 
the divine Power that is ever creating and 
redeeming the world. Abraham, the father 
of the faithful, as we read the story of him, 
was a good man, who loved the thing that 
was right, and did it for himself and his 
neighbor. This was his faith, as it has been 
the living faith of every good and holy man 
who has lived on the face of the earth. 

Now you will see that this is the very heart 
and substance of all true religion. The 
source of all that was vital in the law of 
Moses and the prophets, it is the germinal 
principle of Christianity ; and whatever you 
may find within the lids of the Bible, or in 



340 THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 

the history of the Christian Churchy of the 
beliefs or the deeds of men, that cannot be 
reconciled with this, is contrary to the spirit 
of our religion, is contrary to the Word 
of God. The religious system which draws 
away the attention of men from this the cen- 
tral truth of Christianity, or which restrains 
and fetters the minds of men in the accept- 
ance of it, or the religious teaching which 
lays the stress upon dogmas and forms of 
worship not essential to the maintenance 
of it, is so far in conflict with the truth 
itself. 

On these grounds both Jesus and Paul 
were outspoken in their criticism of the sys- 
tem and teaching of the Jewish Church in 
their day. They had no controversy with 
the truth that lay at the heart of the Jewish 
religion. It was only their aim to vindicate 
this, and bring it out more clearly before men. 
They desired to free the mind from its bond- 
a2:e to ordinances and traditional beliefs which 
the true religion had outgrown, and which 
was now a clog to the growth of a spiritual 
life ; and for this they were persecuted unto 
death. So it has been in the ag-es since. 



— ' - '- 



THE WAY CALLED HERESY, 341 

''By the light of burning heretics, Christ's bleeding feet I 

track, 
Toiling up new Calvaries, ever with the cross, that turns not 

back; 
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation 

learned 
One new word of that grand Credo, which in prophet hearts 

hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered, with his face to 

heaven upturned." ^ 

Why is it that good men and true have been 
persecuted, as Paul was, for heresy ? Is it 
not because in the Christian Church itself the 
spirit of Christ has been wanting ? The doc- 
trines and traditions of men have been mag- 
nified above the very substance of Christian 
truth. The righteousness that Abraham had 
by faith was of vastly greater importance 
than the outward sign which attested it. The 
obedience of the moral law of Moses was 
above the religious cultus that followed it. 
" I will have mercy, and not sacrifice/' said 
the Lord to His prophets. 

St. Paul tells us that the promise of bless- 
ing was to Abraham while he was yet uncir- 
cumcised, and to the true Israel of God, who 
should walk in the steps of the father of the 

^ Lowell's " Present Crisis." 



342 THE WAY CALLED HERESY. 

faithful, to the end of the world. Let us see 
to it that our own claim to this promise be 
not forfeited ; and let us beware how we 
impose upon others any other than this, the 
sole condition of inheriting the promise, both 
for the life that now is and that which is to 
come. Abraham no doubt had some erro- 
neous opinions concerning God. His creed 
was not quite the same as ours. He did not 
know the Christ altogether, as we do. The 
revelation of God in humanity was but par- 
tially given him. Perhaps, if he were living 
now, w^ith the same belief, it might be said 
that lie was not orthodox. He might even 
be called heretic ; very likely he would be 
despised by many Christians as a Jew. But 
according to the light that he had he tried 
to walk before God in a righteous life ; and 
for this he is held up before us as an exem- 
plar of the true faith in God. 

Our own opinions in matters of religion 
may be right or they may be wrong. Our 
creed may be orthodox, as men count ortho- 
doxy, or it may not. But of one thing we 
are sure, that if the spirit of Christ be ours, 
then we are His \ and Christ is God's. 



XXI. 



XXI. 

THE LOED'S SIDE.^ 

" Who is on the Lord^s side ? " — Ex. xxxii. 26. 




HE man who spoke these words 
was a prophet and lawgiver 
in Israel. In the wisdom of 
his statutes and the righteous- 
ness of his rule, he stands to-day 
without his peer among his contemporaries 
in history. Moses believed that he held his 
place among the people by Divine appoint- 
ment. The remarkable events of their exo- 
dus out of Egypt, and the journeyings which 
followed, were under the guidance of a Divine 
Providence. The government which Moses 
instituted was theocratic. He declared it to 
be the ordinance of God. Its commandments 
and its judgments he believed were divine. 
Certain offences — idolatry, among the rest — 

1 1883. 



346 THE LORD'S SIDE. 

were punishable with death. When the man- 
date went forth to execute this penalty upon 
the worshippers of the golden calf, Moses de- 
clared that the word of the Lord had spoken 
it : " Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put 
every man his sword by his side, and go in 
and out from gate to gate throughout the 
camp, and slay every man his brother, and 
every man his companion, and every man his 
neighbor." The narrative tells us that the 
sons of Levi executed this command accord- 
ing to the word of Moses ; " and there fell 
of the people that day about three thousand 
men." 

Thus it was, in the days of Moses, that men 
took sides, for and against the God of Israel. 
Whatever we may think, in these days, of the 
claim of that great man to speak and act for 
God, there can be no two opinions about the 
fact recorded, when viewed in the light of 
the Christian revelation. It was an act of 
barbarity. So we should pronounce it, if a 
similar offence, and under the like conditions, 
were visited with the like penalty anywhere 
on the face of the earth in this the nineteenth 
century of the Christian era. To allow our 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 347 

moral judgment to be held in suspense or 
falsified respecting the facts of history, either 
sacred or profane, were to be recreant to the 
spirit of Him whom w^e confess to be our 
Lord. It is a false religious teaching which 
requires us to believe of God that which an 
enlightened Christian conscience condemns.-^ 

But it does not follow from our belief in 
the superior revelation of God, which is ours 
through Christ, that we must refuse to believe 
in the wisdom and sincerity of Moses, or that 
he was the divinely commissioned leader and 
prophet of Israel. His work was fitted to 
the age in which he lived. His word was ac- 
cording to the light which had come to bim 
from above ; and, on the whole, it was a word 

1 " Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged prin- 
ciple of logic and of morality, that when we mean different 
things, we have no right to call them by the same name, and 
to apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. 
Language has no meaning for the words 'just,' 'merciful/ 'be- 
nevolent,' save that in which we predicate them of our fellow 
creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by 
them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirm- 
ing them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, 
differing only as in greater degree, we are neither philosophi- 
cally nor morally entitled to affirm them at all." — John Stuart 
Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy. 



348 THE LORD'S SIDE, 

of wisdom, penetrating the darkness of a still 
benighted world. That it did not come at 
once in the blaze of the meridian sun, is no 
proof that its source was not divine. "" The 
law/^ — which we still receive, — prescribing 
our duty to God and our neighbor, came by 
Moses. It was holy, just, and good. But to 
us it means vastly more than it did to Israel ; 
for we interpret and apply it now accord- 
ing to the grace and truth of Christ. The 
Mosaic conception of the Divine character 
and the Divine will is a lower one than the 
Christian. Jesus did not command His disci- 
ples to propagate the gospel by the sword. 
Idolaters were not to be exterminated, but 
converted. The cross was not to be blazoned 
upon the banners of armies. Crusades have 
been proclaimed for the recovery of the sep- 
ulchre of Jesus from the hands of infidels, 
and Christian soldiers have w^aded through 
seas of blood ; but this only proves how 
sadly the spirit of His teaching has been 
misconceived. 

They who would find a Scripture warrant 
for the deeds of violence which have been 
done in the name of Christ must look for it 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 349 

in the records of a people enlightened indeed 
above others in the way of righteousness, but 
with customs and traditions and beliefs and 
habits not very far removed from those of 
the semi-barbarous nations about them. Jesus 
Himself has taught us to read the history of 
that ancient people with a wise discrimina- 
tion, — to see how some things which we now 
condemn were allowed for the hardness of 
men's hearts, or required by their rulers 
beccause of the seeming necessities of the 
time ; and withal how the teaching of Moses 
and the prophets was gradually leading men 
on to Christ. 

Only let us not refuse to see as the spirit of 
Christ would have us ; reading the Scriptures 
with a veil upon our hearts, and resisting the 
guidance of that " kindly light," which casts 
its rays upon the sacred page itself, and illu- 
mines the pathway of life before us. Is there 
any lesson, then, that we may draw from that 
page of Israel's history ? And has the ques- 
tion of Moses any pertinency for us to-day : 
^' Who is on the Lord's side?" 

We have seen how this question divided 
men in the time of Moses. How does it di- 



350 THE LORD'S SIDE. 

vide men to-day ? I think it is well that we 
should have some clear conception of what 
the Lord's side is to-day, and of the demands 
which it makes upon ourselves ; well to in- 
quire if an attitude of neutrality is possible 
in times like these, — whether there be not 
some idolatry that we are to hate, some wor- 
ship of false gods that we are to renounce, 
some battle that we are to fight. 

An answer to questions like these is not 
difficult. They all resolve themselves into 
one or two very simple ones : What is right 
and what is wrong in conduct ? What is 
true and what is false in principle ? What is 
good and what is evil in thought, word, and 
deed ? It is true men will sometimes differ in 
their answers to questions like these. They 
may lead a thoughtful mind into speculations 
too profound to be of any immediate profit to 
the mass of men. But it requires no very 
deep thinking to determine the right thing 
and the wrong thing to do in our every-day 
life, or to settle in our minds which is the 
Lord's side and which is the Devil's side in 
the great world wherein we are called upon 
to act. 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 351 

It is not SO much deep thinking as serious 
thinking that is required of men in respect 
of the great moral issues of our time. A 
Christian man to-day cannot float along with 
the tide, seeking his own ease or pleasure 
or profit, shunning responsibility, indifferent 
to the claims of duty, excusing himself from 
action on every trivial plea that policy or 
indolence may invent. 

If there be a Lord of heaven and earth at 
all, there is something for us to do and to 
contend for on His side, — something to love 
and something to hate. And it becomes us 
to see to it that our love and our hate are 
directed to the right objects. See that ye 
hate the thing that is evil. How many evil 
things there are in the world about us, — in 
society, in business, in politics ! The half or 
more of our daily journals is filled with the 
record of them. Have w^e no word to say 
of the selfish greed and trickery with which 
great fortunes are but too often acquired, of 
the shameless perversion of official influence 
and power? Have we no side to take in 
questions which concern the future peace and 
honor of the nation ? When the corruption 



352 THE LORD'S SIDE, 

of social or public life is brought to our no- 
tice, shall we pass it by with a sigh or a 
sneer, or tacitly accept it as inevitable, and 
be drawn ourselves, with an evil heart of 
unbelief, into the way of it? Alas for the 
miserable half-heartedness of Christian effort 
against some of the forms of evil with which 
our modern life has been infected ! 

A gifted writer in England, in speaking of 
his countrymen, presents to his readers the 
spectacle of " an upper class materiahzed, a 
middle class vulgarized, and a lower class 
brutalized." He is speaking roughly of so- 
ciety at large, and of the influences which 
are moulding it ; declaring also the presence 
of certain refining and spiritualizing elements 
to counteract them. With an imperfect knowl- 
edge of our ow^n country and its people, he 
ventures upon a criticism offensive to our na- 
tional pride, but not without some discern- 
ment of the truth concerning ourselves. For, 
looking broadly upon human life in our 
midst, is it not true that material interests 
are dominant in American society, — that the 
golden calf is set up for worship in the land, 
and is more potent for mischief here than 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 353 

elsewhere, — that the votaries of pleasure and 
of profit and power are multiplymg with a 
somewhat alarming rapidity ? And does not 
the fact bring with it some lesson of admoni- 
tion, not to say of warning, to those who in 
declaring the Lord to be their God have set 
their faces heavenward, in quest of the true 
riches and power of the kingdom of God? 
There is a Christian ideal, as of individual life, 
so of human society. A true love for God, who 
is no respecter of persons, and for our fellow- 
men who are to be made one in Christ, ay, 
and a true love for the country which is God's 
most precious heritage for the people who 
share its blessings, will enshrine that ideal in 
the hearts of all good men, and inspire them 
with a righteous hatred of the evils which 
menace it. Wherever they are visible, — 
whether in the voluptuous sensuality which 
but too often follows the possession of wealth 
and turns it from a blessing into a curse, or in 
the coarser indulgences of poverty, — whether 
in the unscrupulous arts of the demagogue 
or in the indifference which opens its palm 
to a bribe, — they are alike to be loathed 
and abhorred. 

23 



354 THE LORD'S SIDE. 

When Christians, instead of taking sides 
against each other, shall unite among them- 
selves, and with all good men wage an un- 
relenting warfare " against the rulers of the 
darkness of this world, against spiritual 
wickedness in high places," then will it be 
seen that they are in very deed on the 
Lord's side, under the banner of the cross of 
Christ. 

The hatreds of a Christian are not to be 
personal. Bad men are sometimes so thor- 
oughly identified with principles and practi- 
ces of evil, that antagonism must be directed 
against both, and it is difficult to separate 
them in feeling. This must needs be remem- 
bered in the judgments we form, even of the 
bloody act of Moses and the Levites, and 
of many like deeds recorded not only in 
Hebrew but also in Christian story. Eesist- 
ance to wrong-doing, even unto blood, has 
sometimes been a sad and stern necessity. 
Justice is truly pictured with the scales in 
one hand and the sword in the other. 

But the spirit of Christ distinguishes be- 
tween the deed and the offender ; and the 
charity which suffereth long and is kind, in 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 355 

its thought of individuals^ will make much of 
the evil conditions under which they have 
come to act, — of heritage and education, of 
circumstance, habit, and example. It will 
confine its hatred to the moral evil of these, 
in the hope of redeeming society and saving 
the souls of men. Only its hatred will be 
uncompromising and untiring, as the love on 
its positive side will never be wearied in 
well-doing. 

We cannot look without pity upon the 
ruin which sometimes follows the detection 
of crime, especially where the good name of 
the offender has hitherto been unsullied. So- 
ciety avenges the wrong to itself with stern 
and unrelenting severity. Even the friends 
of the guilty one share in his disgrace, feel- 
ing it more bitterly perhaps than himself. It 
is God's way of condemning the wrong, and 
guarding against its repetition. Nor is it 
without the further purpose of a discipline in 
virtue, which may be regarded as the chief 
end of a religious faith. For how shall we 
establish right relations with God, where 
truth and honor and fidelity are not cher- 
ished as sacred among men ? Teach your 



356 THE LORD'S SIDE. 

children from the cradle to be just and true 
and unselfish, bring them up with a scorn of 
all that is mean and false and sordid, and 
you will form a basis of character which is 
the only support of a genuine religious faith. 
Every man worships the Divine enshrined in 
his own breast. 

He then is on the Lord's side who hates 
the thing which is hateful to God, and loves 
the right, after the eternal will and purpose 
made known to the world in the gospel of 
Christ. Good men on the same side may 
differ in their modes of activity. They will 
sometimes appear to be at cross purposes with 
one another, ranged under different banners, 
divided into rival and even hostile camps ; 
but with the same wish at heart to do the 
right thing, they will not be far apart. A 
single-hearted aim like this will soon make 
itself manifest to the world, and it will be 
seen that, however divided to the outward 
eye, they are united under one invisible Head, 
all contending together on the Lord's side. 

For here it must be noted that as we look 
out upon the world, the sight is not altogether 
one to excite our hostility and our fears. 



THE LORD'S SIDE. 357 

How much tliere is in life to engage our 
more kindly affections, — in the virtues of good 
men ; in the noble effort of loyal souls to 
multiply the blessings which come from the 
hand of God ; in the toils of honest and peace- 
ful industry ; in the seeking after troth ; in 
the quest and diffusion of knowledge ; in the 
love of country, with an" active interest in a 
rule of justice and equity; and then, above 
all, in that divine reality which is pictured 
to the eye of faith, — the removal of every 
curse, the enjoyment of every blessing, the 
coming and the rule of Christ in the hearts 
of men ! This it is that becomes the prayer, 
as it is also the unfailing hope, of the believ- 
ing soul who looks out upon the world to-day. 
And the outlook of faith in God is ever a 
cheering one. He is on the Lord's side, and 
that side he knows will be the winning one 
at last. " Then cometli the end, when He 
shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, 
even the Father; when He shall have put 
down all rule and all authority and power. 
For He must reign, till He hath put all ene- 
mies under His feet." 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER; 

A Biography. By Francis H. Underwood, i vol. i2mo. 
illustrated, - - - - - ^1.50 

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" A mine of interesting retrospect and valuable material. Altogether 
a most delightful volume." — IV Y. Com. Advertiser. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

By Francis H. Underwood. 1 vol., small quarto, with 
6 Heliotypes. . . . . $1.50 

" This sketch of Lowell is a very pleasant one, and full of in- 
teresting things." — Boston Advertiser. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

By Francis H. Underwood. i2mo. - - $1.50 

The itlii-itrations include the ancient home of Lottgf ell civ's ancestors, at 
Newbnry : his birth place at Portland: the houses in which he lived many 
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a facsimile of his handwriting. 

" The thoughtful reader of Mr. Underwood's sketch will possess the 
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RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

His Life, Writings, and Philosophy. By George Willis 
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" Mr. Emerson's relations with the great minds of the century are 
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GEORGE ELIOT. 

A Critical Study of her Life, Writings and Philosophy. 
By George Willis Cooke. With portrait. ^2.00 

■' The book opens with an account of her life, which gives a few facts 
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In six chapters her books are taken up in their order, and it is shown 
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books and articles about her, concludes the book." 



FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF THE PHILLIPS 
EXETER ACADEMY and SURROUNDINGS. 

By Frank H. Cunningham, i vol. Illustrated. - ^2.50 

'"A very beautiful and valuable volume." — Boston Transciipt. 

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bygone times with which it deals." — Boston Advertiser. 

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HISTORY OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE. 

With Biographical Sketches of its Graduates, from 1806 to 
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1 81 3). Edited and Compiled by Alpheus Spring 
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JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., BOSTOIT. 



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